Valve adds fair play guidelines to fight CSGO matchmaking hackers

Fariha Bhatti Published 07/07/2021

Players have been complaining about blatant hackers running rampant in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s matchmaking queue. Instead of coming up with a more severe punishment for these cheaters, Valve has rolled out new “fair play guidelines” in a recent patch update.

The cheating problem in CSGO isn’t a new thing. Players have long been bugging the developer to wipe out the game’s hackers, and it seems that Valve has finally listened. The developer has released “fair play guidelines” in its latest notes to warn hackers.

Today we’re adding Competitive matchmaking presets and the ability to save and load favorite map selections. We’ve also added a page with CS:GO Fair Play Guidelines and other miscellaneous updates. Release Notes in full: https://t.co/V4Pcdxxvvs
— CS:GO (@CSGO) July 6, 2021

The guidelines read that players must:

Not cheat.
Never grief or verbally abuse your teammates or opponents.
Never use any automation for any reason.

Valve’s shooter is crammed with cheaters who exploit VAC with the help of third-party softwares. While winning games through unfair means has always been a problem in CSGO, it has become more common in the past few months. The number of cheaters spiked after CSGO went free-to-play on Steam in 2018, and hackers have only increased ever since.

Valve called out by CSGO caster for rampant cheating

The poor matchmaking experience has become a severe nuisance for the game’s players. Many were expecting something more potent than new “guidelines” asking competitors not to hack. The release notes for June 7 feature a few other tweaks to the game, but the guidelines stood out for players tired of getting no-scoped mid-air. The notice also included a warning for hackers. Hopefully, Valve is hinting that it’s gearing up to further punish these hackers soon.

“Failure to play following these guidelines may result in various penalties, including cooldowns, communication restrictions, and Game Bans. Obviously, it’s fine to try new things and experiment with new strats and skills, but players should not enter a match with the intention of losing or disrupting their teammates,” Valve said.

Considering the critical situation of matchmaking, the developer restricted CSGO’s Prime queues to premium members, reverting CSGO’s free-to-play status to some extent. However, no direct action against cheaters has been taken so far. Valve’s feeble anti-cheat system that has failed to filter out the cheaters has managed to elude Valve’s attention.

This warning in patch notes is Valve’s first move against the hackers in quite some time, but many players are worried that it’s not nearly enough.

Other updates in CSGO’s recent release notes

Release notes for June 7 include tweaks to the game’s stability, a bullet penetration issue observed on Inferno, and a new bot difficulty selector. Apart from that, premier matchmaking can now be selected together with other competitive maps. Players will also be able to save and load their favourite map selections through new competitive matchmaking preset.

Fariha Bhatti

About Fariha Bhatti

Fariha Bhatti is a long-time gaming writer who loves competitive FPS games and slots with particularly fun themes. She got her start playing classic games developed by SNK, from legendary fighting game series The King of Fighters to challenging platform franchise Metal Slug. She now spends most of her time playing Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 while working her way through new slot releases to find her next favorite. Fariha has been published at PCGamesN, TalkEsport and ONE Esports.

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