New CS:GO Ranked System Explained

Oh no, not again...

Photo of a house in CS:GO. There's a soldier in front of the house.
Image via Valve

Valve made some Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matchmaking changes and tweaks at the beginning of August 2022, which has many competitive matchmaking players pondering what’s going to happen with their ranks. In this article, we will try to demystify these new changes for our readers. Here’s the new CSGO Ranking system explained.

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If you have hopped on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive recently, you might have noticed that your competitive rank has disappeared. Valve has stated, in their patch notes on the official Counter-Strike blog here and here, that the ranks will need to be recalibrated for accuracy.

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How do you regain your rank? Easy. Just win ONE competitive matchmaking match. This will allow the system to recalculate your actual rank, according to the new changes. In addition to that, the patch notes emphasize that the Game Instructor’s floating hints have been disabled during Competitive matches. They were just getting in the way, realistically.

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We also can see that there was a VAC ban wave in the second half of July 2022, which banned approximately 20,000 cheaters from CS:GO. This (along with the matchmaking algorithm and ranking system update changes) caused the ranks to change for many players. On average, it seems that the EU players have downranked a bit, and NA players have seen quite a bit of rank increases.

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Remember, on August 21, 2022, CS:GO turns 10! This might indicate that a big update might be around the corner. There are some theories that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive might be upgraded into Source 2 at some point. There are some game files that hint that some tests are in progress, but we have yet to hear from Valve about this via one of their official channels of communication. We hope for great things in CS:GO in the next 10 years. Make sure to browse more of our CS:GO articles by clicking the game tag here or under this article.

Related: How to Most Efficiently Rank-up in CS:GO Competitive Matchmaking (2022)


About the Author

Nikola L

Nikola has been a Staff Writer at Prima Games since May 2022. He has been gaming since being able to hold an Amiga 500 joystick on his own, back in the early 90s (when gaming was really good!). Nikola has helped organize dozens of gaming events and tournaments and has been professionally attached to gaming since 2009.