How Valve’s CS:GO Trust Factor Matchmaking System Works, According To Patent

by Jose Portillo on August 29, 2025

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Proper matchmaking in online games is difficult to do well, put simply, but recent patent filings by Valve give users a peek behind the curtain at the various data miners at work in establishing the Trust Factor in CS:GO . There is quite a bit of information in these patents that range from 2018 to 2020 , and of course, not all of the point below can be said to contribute to an individual’s Trust Factor, though in reality most probably are to some degree.

What Is Valve’s Trust Factor?

Valve’s newest effort at matchmaking assigns players with a value known as the Trust Factor. This is a hidden value that considers several points to help place a player into a match. Valve has made it perfectly clear in this blog post that they will not revealing the specifics that modify this value because they do not want players to alter their behavior <a href="https://WWW.Counterstrike2guide.com/articles/my-epic-gaming-journey-the-ultimate-guide-to-multiplayer-mayhem-in-2025.html">Counter-Strike 2 Updates</a> in an effort to manipulate the system. This is perfectly fair on their part, as players will go to great lengths to break video games, either just for fun, or to gain a competitive advantage.

Ultimately, the Trust Factor has a clear focus according to the patent, which, "may provide an improved gaming experience for users who desire to play a video game in multiplayer mode in the manner it was meant to be played." This description playing a game as intended refers to players who respect the game in its core design, meaning those who do not cheat or act in toxic ways.

<img src="https://static1.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/csgo-image-2-1.jpg"; alt="" /> Via: store.steampowered.com

The patent elaborates on this point further, "This is because the techniques and systems described herein are able to match together players who are likely to behave badly (e.g., cheat), and to isolate those players from other trusted players who are likely to play the video game legitimately…[and] may be configured to identify any type of behavior (good or bad)."

It is fascinating that before even mentioning the skill-based aspects of matchmaking, it is behavior associated with cheating or what we could interpret as toxicity is addressed first. Obviously there needs to be a focus on isolating cheaters from non-cheaters, but one might have guessed that skill would have taken a predominate spot in determining the Trust Factor for placing one player with similarly skilled others.

Features That May Contribute To The Trust Factor

In the patent, there is a broad range of points listed that could all be used in determining the Trust Factor. Here we will go into some of the more interesting as well as some of the obvious. To begin, the following are one’s that we might expect to see in any game’s matchmaking system:

an amount of time a player spent playing video games in general,

an amount of time a player spent playing a particular video game,

times of the day the player was logged in and playing video games,

match history data for a player- e.g., total score (per match, per round, etc.), headshot percentage, kill count, death count, assist count, player rank, etc.,

The above points come as little surprise. The longer one has spent on a single game account, the less likely they are to be outright cheating due to the cheat detection systems and the issuing of VAC-bans for those who are caught. If one has several hundred or thousands of hours in a game, it is fair to say they enjoy playing and likely are not cheating relative to an account with only a few hours of playtime.

<img src="https://static1.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/csgo-image-3.jpg"; alt="" /> Via: store.steampowered.com

The next few sets of conditions that might affect the Trust Factor address cheating outright:

a number and/or frequency of reports of a player cheating,

a number and/or frequency of cheating acquittals for a player, <img alt="" />

a number and/or frequency of cheating convictions for a player,

confidence values (score) output by a machine learning model that detected a player of cheat during a video game,

a number of user accounts associated with a single player (which may be deduced from a common address, phone number, payment instrument, etc. tied to multiple user accounts),

how long a user account has been registered with the video game service,

a number of previously-banned user accounts tied to a player,

number and/or frequency of a player’s monetary transactions on the video game platform,

These too appear to be straightforward contributors to Trust Factor. Those who are often accused of cheating and no acquitted of the complaint may be best lumped together with similar players. Those who are associated with other accounts that have received bans may also be treated the same.

Where it gets a little odd, or rather, problematic, is with the following potential determiners of a Trust Factor:

a dollar amount per transaction,

a number of digital items of monetary value associated with a player’s user account,

geographic locations from which a player has logged-in to the video game service, <img src="https://observatoriodegames.uol.com.br/tag/counter-strike-3"; style="max-width:410px;float:right;padding:10px 0px 10px 10px;border:0px;" alt="" />

The first two points quite literally seem to indicate that more money spent in game on cosmetics translating to being more trustworthy. Perhaps there is some truth to this, as spending real money in a game may dissuade a user from cheating and risking the lose of an account, but it still seems odd without confirmation of that idea.

<img src="https://static1.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/csgo-image-4.jpg"; alt="" /> Via: store.steampowered.com

Geographic location on the other hand is a strange one. Perhaps a player needs to move often, and that is outside of their control. Perhaps players need to use VPNs for undisclosed reasons, and that too may be out of their hands. Whatever the case, it would be fascinating to know more about how Valve uses this data.

Ultimately, we can only really guess as to how Valve weighs each of these points, or if it even uses all of them at all in determining a Trust Factor value per player account. There is much more to consider, and everyone should take the time to check out the patent for themselves. It can appear to be a long, daunting read, because it is, but there are some interesting pieces of information to glean from such an endeavor.

Source: patents.google.com

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