FACEIT is cracking down on Counter-Strike 2 game leavers by increasing the penalty for abandoning teammates.
CS2 culture is such that players take their FACEIT level way more seriously than they’d ever take Valve competitive rank. This is partly due to the strict anti-cheat that the platform offers. With a guarantee of minimal cheaters, serious players often take their competitive games to FACEIT. But even FACEIT couldn’t find an antidote for leavers.
However, the platform has now introduced a new rule that will force serial leavers in CS2 to complete their games. This way, teammates won’t have to bear the brunt of their irresponsible behavior, at least to some extent.
On July 4, FACEIT announced that CS2 leavers will now receive double Elo loss upon losing a game. Their teammates, on the other hand, will notice a 50% drop in Elo lost upon losing a game without a fifth teammate.
The same principle applies to games won. This means that if a player leaves a game and their team wins without them, the player will receive 50% less Elo compared to if they had played the entire game. For instance, if their teammates earned 25 Elo for winning a four-versus-five match, the player who left will only receive 12-15 Elo.
“While we can’t eliminate leavers completely, we hope these changes will make the experience less frustrating and discourage players from abandoning games,” FACEIT developers said.
Leavers are generally the players who either don’t care enough about the game or are too confident in their ability to make up for the loss in other games. However, their teammates often suffer from their poor attitude. In a game like CS2, a team needs all five players to properly lock down sites or rush into them in order to win, which is impossible with players leaving every other game.
This change may not eliminate leavers in CS2, but it will make them think twice before abandoning teammates for no logical reason.
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