Valve made CSGO free-to-play (F2P) players no longer able to play ranked matchmaking. In an announcement made through a tweet, Valve confirmed that ranked matchmaking will now be locked behind the game's premium Prime service.
Today we're making adjustments to non-Prime accounts. We're also introducing Unranked matchmaking. Information about these changes can be found in today's Blog Post: https://t.co/W6m42EUTAH
— CS:GO (@CSGO) June 4, 2021
“Today we're making adjustments to non-Prime accounts,” says the tweet. “We're also introducing Unranked matchmaking.”
The new changes also make it impossible for free-to-play players to earn their Prime accounts by playing the game. This locks out F2P players completely from CSGO ranked matchmaking. F2P players can still play any maps from Casual, Workshop, Deathmatch, and the newly implemented Unranked mode.
In Unranked, both Prime and non-Prime players can be queued in. Any map can be played in Unranked, and serves as a replacement to the old Scrimmage mode. It'll have no rank lobby restrictions. Ranked matchmaking in comparison will exclusively be for Prime players from now on.
Valve explains that this move is meant to combat cheaters and smurfs. Since the game went free-to-play in 2018, the ability to play the game without spending opened a floodgate of cheats, hackers, and smurfs. Introducing a paywall will at least make these issues less frequent.
Players who bought the game before CSGO went free-to-play have been awarded a free Prime account, as long as they have a mobile number linked to their account. Meanwhile, those who don't have a Prime account can purchase Prime status for $14.99. Players can check out all of the new changes on CSGO Prime on Valve's FAQ page for the matter.
This will be the next CSGO microtransaction change since the introduction of 360 Stats earlier this month.
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