Most CS:GO players are, unfortunately, used to have some problems in their matches - sometimes it’s high toxicity, other times cheaters. It’s the unfortunate reality of today’s online multiplayer games and there’s simply no other way around. It’s a game of cat and mouse between VALVE and that dark side of the community.

But, the truth is that VALVE is doing a great job tackling these problems, although a silent one. One of the better updates these last few years that helped to tackle these issues was the introduction of the Trust Factor. But what is this Trust Factor and how can it help you? This article will focus on helping you improve your game experience and, hopefully, make you happier while playing the game we all love!

What Is Trust Factor?

Trust Factor was originally released by VALVE in 2017 and is a hidden rating based on a variety of factors and activities. It’s not based solely on CS:GO, though - it actually has all the Steam activity of the player in account. It has the objective of helping players finding matches with other players that have the same rating. Let’s say you have a positive rating - you’re most likely to be matched with similar players, helping you have a better experience with less “bad” players.

Trust Factor is an extension to Prime Matchmaking - the system that allowed the players to connect their phone numbers to the Steam Account in order to only play with other “verified” accounts.

VALVE has not released the full list of factors that Trust Factor uses to calculate the final value, most likely to avoid people trying to mislead it, but there are some known:

Times that you have been reported. Although not fully confirmed, griefing reports are suspected to have a decent impact on the rating;
Time spent playing CS:GO;
Time spent playing other games on that particular account (as well as money spent on the account).

You might be thinking, “But wait, I probably get reported a lot of times by tilted players.” Sure, everyone gets incorrectly reported once or twice every other day, but my recommendation is to just ignore it. You can’t control that, and VALVE also knows that - so that should have been taken into account when creating the Trust Factor algorithm.

There are other rumored factors, but these are purely speculation:

The age of your Steam Account;
Your Matchmaking cooldown level (30 minutes, 2 hours, etc.)
Team Damage dealt in matches and how many times you’re kicked for it;
Game and VAC bans in your account.

When playing with other players, bear in mind that the system uses the lowest value of all the players in order to find a match, so be careful playing with those more “toxic” players. A reminder that you don’t get a lower Trust Factor value when playing with those players, but you might get reported more, so maybe you should avoid it if you can. Unless

How Can You Improve Your Trust Factor?

In fact, you can’t. At least not directly. This was present in VALVE’s FAQ after the release of the Trust Factor:

Q: What can I do to improve my Trust Factor?

A: All you need to do is be a positive member of the CS:GO and Steam community. We’re still iterating on the Trust Factor model and adjusting the way various factors are combined, but we want to make sure that all you have to do to improve your matchmaking experience is continue to play CS:GO and other Steam games legitimately. The more you play, the more information the system has and the easier it will be for the system to determine who you should be matched with.

As you can see, you can’t play the game a different way just to improve your Trust Factor rating. What you can do, though, is become someone positive to the community and it will improve over time.

Similar to VAC, Trust Factor was an AI learning mechanic, meaning it will become better with time - it will be able to identify behaviour patterns better and apply them to different players when doing calculations.

Trust Factor should help to improve your MM experience. Photo courtesy of VALVE.

What exactly is a positive member of the community you ask? Well, first of all, and the EASIEST one - don’t cheat. Don’t ruin the game for others. If you do, hopefully, you get banned as soon as possible. Second, don’t flame! Don’t be toxic. You most likely hate when people flame you, so why do it yourself to others? Even if they’re being toxic to you, don’t do it. You can use the in-game tools created for that reason, like muting and reporting. You may not even notice, but these are the type of behaviors that will ruin your Trust Factor and will lead you to get more matches with toxic players.

Getting your Trust Factor up is something that will take time, it’s not something that you should focus on in the short-term. Take this as an opportunity to better yourself in-game and inside this vast CS:GO community.

The More You Play, the Better

It has been confirmed by VALVE that Trust Factor learns through AI, and the more you play, the more it “knows” you, which means knowing how often you’re reported, how often you get commended, how often you get muted by other players, how often you get kicked, etc. All those small details get registered and are taken into account when calculating your Trust Factor.

Look at the Trust Factor as a motivation to better your online behavior not only on CS:GO, but also on other games. Naturally, the way you behave in other games won’t affect your Trust Factor (unless you get a VAC or Game ban), but it won’t hurt, right? In fact, you’ll only end up making the game better for everyone!

Remember - you’re playing a game, you’re supposed to have fun! Not every player wants to become the best player in the world, so make sure to understand that before even thinking about flaming and eventually making it worse for everyone, including you.

Thank you for reading this article! I hope you enjoyed it and were able to learn something useful from it. You can reach out for feedback or suggestions via Twitter.

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