CS:GO Player Count Drops 17% After Ranked Match Is No Longer Free

GAMEFINITY.ID, Purworejo – Early last June, Valve officially implemented a new policy on CS:GO games that made Ranked Matches no longer free and only available to players with Prime status. However, Valve’s efforts to eradicate these cheaters have resulted in a decrease in the number of CS:GO players.

Reported from Dot Esports, SteamCharts recorded that the average CS:GO player base decreased by 16.75% or around 100,000 players last June. This is the second largest number of declines recorded since April 2021.

CS:GO

This policy change seems to be the main cause of this decline in players. From the start, Valve presented this Prime status with the aim of making it difficult for cheaters to enter Ranked Match. However, if in the past players were able to upgrade to Prime status by reaching level 21, now players have to buy a prime upgrade for 213 thousand Rupiah.

This change is a very natural thing because since CS:GO became a free-to-play game, many people have abused it to ruin the game like cheaters do.

However, in fact modes such as Casual, Workshop Maps and Deathmatch can still be played by players with non Prime status. Valve also introduced a new mode, Unranked. This mode is similar to Ranked Match, only players will not get rank, XP or loot drops.

Although this decline does not necessarily make CS:GO no longer the most popular game on Steam, it is still quite worrying. The reason is that competing games like Valorant have continued to increase in the number of players lately. Let’s wait and see what the next steps will be taken by Valve.