Recent efforts to curb cheating in CS:GO may be affecting the player base of one of Steam's biggest games, and with the June 3 patch, Valve has completely overhauled CS:GO's Prime status. Prime status is required to play competitively and was previously earned by players playing the game enough or purchasing it; since June, Prime status has been available for a flat $15, turning a soft play barrier into a solid paywall The game is now available for a flat fee of $15.

Dot Esports first discovered CS:GO's recent concurrent player averages as recorded by SteamCharts, which show that the game has seen a 16.7% decline (an average of over 100,000 players) since the early June patch. multiplayer games, it is worth noting that it fluctuates regularly. Still, this is the steepest month-over-month decline since 2018.

The change in prime status is a reasonable cause for this anomaly. Since its inception, prime status has been intended to promote fairness by making it harder for cheaters and smurf accounts to enter ranked play. In a recent developer blog, Valve admitted that since becoming free-to-play, CS:GO's Prime status has been abused by "bad actors" (presumably referring to cheaters and smurf accounts), "hurting the experience of both new and existing players." When the new patch was released, accounts that had already obtained Prime status were still applied, but accounts that had not yet obtained Prime status after the two-week deadline would have to pay $15 to play CS:GO's primary mode, Competitive Competitive, the primary mode of CS:GO.

Basically, Valve is hoping that the new Competitive fee will keep cheaters out of Competitive. I want to go back to ruining other people's fun after my last account was VAC BANNED" Cutting down your play time with a new freebie account will not do you any good. This paywall also targets malicious services that sell accounts with "fake" prime status that grind in bot-assisted playtime.

The rest of CS:GO, like casual matches and the Danger Zone Battle Royale mode, will remain free-to-play; for players who want a taste of competitive play without paying for Prime, Valve has introduced the Unranked matchmaking toggle. Unranked plays just like Competitive, but players do not earn ranks, XP, or loot drops.

So if the new Prime rules are good for the health of the game, why have player numbers declined? It could be many things, but I suspect that a significant portion of the accounts that did not sign in during June are replacement or smurf accounts held by existing players who did not pay to make matchmaking legal. The natural ebb and flow of player interest between updates is certainly a factor, but it is important to note that, recent declines notwithstanding, CS:GO has never been as popular as it has been in the last year; CS:GO has been the most popular FPS on Steam for almost a decade of its lifespan.

Hopefully many of the June non-participants are cheaters. For all the changes Prime status has undergone over the years, this has the potential to be the most effective iteration yet: before CS:GO went free-to-play, cheaters could wait for Steam sales and buy the game on another account for as long as they wanted with a clean pass to Prime status was possible; now that Prime is paid for and there will likely never be another sale, cheaters are guaranteed the minimum required cost.