Counter-strike's new matchmaking system can tell if you've been naughty in other Steam games

Counter-strike: Global Offensive has a new matchmaking system which takes into account your behaviour across Steam - not just in CS:GO.

Valve's new system assigns every player a hidden value, known as their Trust Factor. This score is derived from how you have played CS:GO - whether you have had reports lodged against you for cheating, for example - but also your activities in other Steam games.

In a blog post explaining the system, Valve said it deliberately avoiding explaining what other activities it was monitoring that would be folded into your Trust Factor value.

Trust Factor is an alternative system to CS:GO's current Prime Matchmaking option, which matched players who linked their game account to a unique phone number. Prime will remain a matchmaking option "in the short term", Valve stated.

"What if the Prime system was re-imagined using a wider range of factors?" Valve wrote. "We started with that question, and have been experimenting with matching players using observed behaviors and attributes of their Steam account, including the overall amount of time they had spent playing CS:GO, how frequently they were reported for cheating, time spent playing other games on their Steam account, etc."

Matches using the Trust Factor system had already generated fewer reports of players encountering cheaters.

"We're not providing the list of factors in the Trust Factor matchmaking system for a few reasons," Valve continued. "We don't want players to have to worry about any particular action while they're playing CS:GO or other games on Steam.

"Additionally, because we're constantly updating the Trust Factor matchmaking system, any list of factors would become out of date very quickly. That being said, in general we're looking at your past experience in CS:GO and on Steam, to ensure the system is as accurate as possible."

To raise your Trust Factor score, Valve concluded, "all you need do is be a positive member of the CS:GO and Steam community". Sounds fair.

"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."

So, in the words of Woody in Toy Story - play nice, okay?