Damaging Counter-Strike 2 error is losing Premier players thousands of Elo

Jeremy Gan
Counter-strike 2 gameplay

A Counter-Strike 2 error is losing players thousands of Elo per Premier game at times due to no fault of their own. 

In the weeks leading up to Counter-Strike 2’s full release, Valve showed off its new competitive mode, Premier. Meant to be an in-game replacement for FACEIT, it pits the best CS players in your region against one another and puts them on a leaderboard.

Designed to be more competitive than regular matchmaking, with map bans and a climbable global and regional leaderboard, with future plans of integrations with the wider esports scene, it’s an exciting new mode. 

However, players are pointing out a devastating flaw with Premier. Every time you abandon a match, you could be deducted 800 to 1000 Elo, and sometimes even through no fault of your own.

Several posts on the CSGO subreddit are reporting that if you abandon a match, players can expect to take a 1000 Elo deduction. This is in comparison to a 100 to 200 elo lost from a defeat. 

The reasons for abandoning a game are several. Most times, it’s due to players leaving the game, which is debatable if such a high Elo loss is justified as a fair punishment. 

However, many players can abandon for several reasons, be it disconnecting due to internet problems, other players ganging up in groups and kicking the lone player, or due to CS2’s many bugs which sometimes even hand out bans. 

All of the above reasons are out of a player’s control, and many CS2 Premier players are asking Valve to revert the massive Elo punishments which was introduced in the new matchmaking system. 

When CS2 was released, many players criticized the game’s lack of game modes and features, bugs that bordered on game-breaking which at times could result in bans, and the still ongoing problems of hackers in lobbies

Valve has yet to respond to the community’s plead to lower Elo punishments for abandoning a Premier game.