About a week ago, Valve launched a new beta program for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that is aimed at curbing the rampant cheating the game sees. Dubbed “Prime Matchmaking,” the new system will allow players to link a single account to their phone number and be matched with only other players who do the same. In theory, this would be a matchmaking feature where cheating and smurfing, which is when a high-level player starts a new account so they can take advantage of inexperienced and less skilled players, would be cut back significantly. If you were caught cheating in one of these matches then Valve could ban your phone number, rather than just your account. In a new Counter Strike: Global Offensive patch released this weekend, Valve has stepped up their anti-cheating weapons even more.
The new Counter-Strike update would allow Valve to ban multiple Steam accounts tied to the same phone number if any one of those accounts is hit with a Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) or game ban. According to a release by Valve: “The phone number on an account that receives a ban will be suspended for three months and cannot be applied to another account during that time. The cooldown duration for applying a phone number after a ban will increase each time a cooldown is applied.”
With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive being one of Valve’s most popular games on Steam, it is good to see that they’re doing everything they can to cut down on some of the uglier conduct that occurs in game. These new anti-cheat methods can surely never eliminate that side of Counter-Strike, but it sounds like Valve is pushing things in the right direction.
What do you think about Valve’s new security measures for CS:GO? Will it be enough, or will cheating still run rampant? Let us know!
