While Activision toys with the idea of creating a match-making system to sell items to players, Valve has been busy developing what may be the most complicated and well-thought out matchmaking system ever designed. Released only days ago, CS:GO’s new matchmaking system is called the Trust Factor, and it is the most advanced, competent matchmaking system ever devised.

Last year, Valve played with their first attempts at modifying their matchmaking system. They started with simple rank and account verification systems – nothing impressive by any standard – but as Valve is prone to doing, they were working on perfecting it. The new system incorporates an extensive system including reports against players, time on CS:GO, time spent in certain matches (and against which players), interactions with other players, and previous game experience.  

Valve isn’t giving much but the basics out about their system, and they are upfront about this. In their blog post, they admit that they don’t want any information to affect how people enjoy the game. Likewise, they don’t want players worrying about optimizing the system, instead letting it be a behind the scenes system working to constantly improve the game.

This is very much in-line with the way that Valve has always operated. With Half-Life 2, the director’s commentary showed that CEO Gabe Newell’s opinion of development boiled down to, “If we are doing it right, you won’t know we did anything at all.” It will be hard for outsiders to accurately measure the success or failure of the system, but Valve has now operated for most of its life as a recluse doing what it thinks is right, and it has worked out right so far. Either way, it’s worlds ahead of systems based around loot boxes and microtransactions.