Boosters have taken over Flying Scoutsman servers in CSGO

CSGO account boosters have performed a mutiny on Valve’s Flying Scoutsman servers.

CSGO players have reported on social media that Flying Scoutsman servers in Australia are entirely populated by bots. These fake players are complex enough to perform vote kicks on real players. This strange occurrence is a part of Valve’s ongoing efforts to curtail account sellers.

Early on July 27, a CSGO player uploaded a video of himself joining a Flying Scoutsman server in Australia only to be immediately vote-kicked before playing a round. In the brief footage, a player named “lodge” scores a no-scope wallbang headshot right as the round starts. The most likely situation is that boosters using aimbot have taken over the Valve server. 

Another possible explanation is that the server is being used as a testing ground for CSGO cheating programs. The single kill that’s shown seems incredibly unlikely without the use of hacks. It’s also plausible that players are using the server to boost kill counts on StatTrak weapons or to farm items. Regardless of the motivation, exploiting a bot-filled Valve server and vote-kicking everyone who joins definitely violates CSGO’s terms of service.

Why do people boost in CSGO?

Accounts selling is a problem across many competitive games. The cheapest Prime status CSGO accounts sell for just a dollar. Accounts with sought-after traits can sell for over $100. Accounts for third-party matchmaking services like FACEIT and ESEA run even higher. 

Valve’s most recent attack on boosters came through changes to Prime status. Ranked in CSGO is now an exclusively paid feature that costs $15. Players could previously earn Prime status for free by grinding the game, but that option combined with being free-to-play caused a massive spike in account boosting and cheating. Valve recently banned more than 10,000 accounts linked to boosting, and daily bans have come at a heightened pace since the Prime update.

Valve’s recent crackdown on CSGO boosting has sparked an arms race between CSGO’s development team and account sellers. As Valve continues its effort to curtail CSGO boosting, boosters will look for new methods to boost while avoiding Valve’s watchful eye. Playing niche game modes on sparsely populated servers is a tactic used in Valve’s other esports title, Dota 2.