Valve’s new matchmaking is either genius or a serious invasion of your privacy

Valve is currently demoing a new matchmaking system for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

To join the experiment, you’ll need to upgrade your CS:GO account to Prime status. In order to upgrade, players will have to bind your Steam phone number to your CS:GO account.

In doing so, Valve hopes players will have a better matchmaking experience, as they will only be matched with other players who took the time to double-verify their details.

It will also eliminate “smurf accounts” as you can only upgrade one CS:GO account to Prime status with your qualifying phone number.

Prime Account Matchmaking has not begun in earnest, but will begin once a large enough player pool has been established.

Other points on “Prime”:
- As with mobile-2 factor authentication on Steam for Android and iOS, VoIP numbers such as the ones used by Google Voice don’t qualify.
- No additional incentives have been confirmed.
- Remember: “Prime” is an experiment – if it turns out to be a total disaster, or if something else doesn’t work out for whatever reason, then Valve could elect to scrap it.

Is this a step too far by Valve, or do you think the new Prime system can only mean good things in the future? Let us know in the comments below.