Study shows which color players are best in CSGO matchmaking

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players have long argued over which colors are best and worst in the game’s popular matchmaking. Now, we finally have a definitive answer.

CSGO lets players customize almost every part of their experience inside the first-person shooter. After introducing weapons skins to the gaming world with its Arms Deal update, CSGO took the next step with Agent skins in Operation Shattered Web. Players can change their crosshair, customize their HUDs, and even pick the music that plays during the game’s most intense action. But for all of its customization, CSGO only has five colors for players to choose from to represent them to other gamers.

Out of the five colors, players that chose purple have always been made fun of. In matchmaking, it’s always purple’s fault. But an analysis of over 20,000 CSGO matches says that purple isn’t even close to the worst color.

CSGO’s deadliest players choose purple as their team color

In CSGO’s competitive mode, players can pick between blue, orange, green, yellow, and purple as their colors. It’s shown on CSGO’s minimap and above players’ heads and allows for teammates to quickly call out a color to relay important information instead of having to try to say a player’s custom nickname. And with CSGO players’ names ranging from “Tom” to “l337AK-tt56z,” it’s a great idea.

But with the limited colors available, CSGO’s community has created some hilarious stereotypes for players that pick a certain color. Yellow always forgets the bomb in spawn. Blue is either a smurf or is a solid Silver IV with 2,000 hours played. Green is a support player, always ready to drop weapons for his teammates. CSGO fans have had fun with these over the years, but everyone agrees on one thing: purple is just the worst. It’s an official CSGO meme now, and it was born out of popular YouTuber SovietWomble’s adventures in CSGO matchmaking.

Except that it turns out purple players are actually better than everyone else.

In a fun experiment, stat-tracking service Leetify analyzed over 20,000 CSGO matches and figured out the win rates for all players using the game’s five colors. What they found wasn’t just surprising, it has the potential to redefine CSGO’s silly color system forever. Instead of being the worst at CSGO, players who chose purple average a higher rating than any other color. At 1.03, purple led both blue and yellow on average in games tracked by Leetify, destroying everything players thought they knew about the color. 

It just goes to show that stereotypes aren’t always true. That said, yellow probably does leave the bomb in spawn most often.

How do you change your player color in CSGO?

As soon as players join or create a CSGO lobby, they can change their player color by clicking on their profile image in the upper right and selecting the color they want by clicking the color wheel. Players can chose from blue, orange, purple, green, or yellow.

How can players change the color of CSGO’s HUD?

CSGO players used to have to go into CSGO’s console to change their HUD color, but Valve recently added a handy menu in CSGO’s settings. The menu is located by clicking on CSGO’s setttings wheel, scrolling down to “HUD,” and choosing one of several different options to change the entire HUD color.