CS:GO Matchmaking Methods: Prime and Non-prime – What are the differences?

The competitive play takes a place in many people’s hearts. Players spend hours and hours practicing and making their gameplay significantly better than it was the last time they played. Players pay close attention to their skills and work on improving them by playing against other players with the same ranks or skills. Players then continue towards playing competitively, grinding away to achieve progress and higher ranks they believe they deserve.

This being the case, Valve, CS:GO’s parent company, aims to provide a better matchmaking experience for their players. With continuous improvement and various iterations of the matchmaking programs, Valve aims to match people more closely with their respective skill levels. Other players circumvent this matchmaking process by looking to buy CSGO Smurf Ranked Accounts or by simply using another person’s account to improve their skills at a lower rank level. This is especially evident in matchmaking games where players find it too hard to play against people who may have a skill level higher than the rank, they are competing at but are stuck due to various circumstances. As such, Valve employs better techniques to ensure that the matchmaking system will facilitate player improvement by effectively placing them against players in their skill level. But what are these matchmaking methods?

Prime Matchmaking

Prime matchmaking used to be a matchmaking system employed by the game to match players who have previously verified their identities by linking their mobile numbers to the game. Simply, those who have been provided with Prime status by doing so are matched all together. After a while, Valve developed this to include other factors such as in-game experience to reach Prime status and be in a match with other Prime players.

Nowadays, Prime status is given to players who have bought the game before its transition to the free-to-play genre, thus providing them Prime matchmaking capability. This is including players who have reached level 21 despite having only started playing after CS:GO became free-to-play. With the advent of non-prime or trust factor matchmaking, players now have the chance to opt for matchmaking with other Prime players or to enter matchmaking with other players simply based on the trust system.

Non-prime Matchmaking

Because Prime matchmaking previously excluded players who wanted to play with other players regardless of their Prime status, Valve created the Trust Factor matchmaking system to circumvent this problem. Here, a wider range of factors is being used to match players, including experience in the game, reports of misconduct, and times spent playing other games in their respective Steam accounts. Essentially, it is a wider iteration of the factors employed in Prime matchmaking to accommodate those who do not have Prime status yet, as well as to provide a general factor of trust in the community.

This being said, keep on playing and improving your skills! Valve has got your back and will ensure that you progress in the best ways possible!