Trust factor is a player characteristic used in matchmaking for a number of games on Steam, for instance, CS:GO. It reflects the conscientiousness and reliability of a particular person. When selecting a match, players come across allies and opponents who have a similar trust factor, which allows fair and decent players not to intersect with violators.

The trust factor mechanic has been around for a long time, but Valve continues to keep the details of how it works in secret. Even in the official Steam Support FAQ some questions aren't answered. That is why I decided to write information that can help understand how the trust factor is formed.

Listed below are the main reliably known parameters that affect the trust factor.

When you launch a new game for the first time (eg CS:GO), your entire reputation is based exclusively on your previous experience with the platform.

Your trust factor will be higher if you have been playing on your account for a long time and haven't been noticed for any violations.
Your trust factor will be lower if you are playing from a new account, or if you had many accounts, which you used to commit violations of the rules.

At the time of writing this guide, prime status can only be obtained through purchase for $15. You can read about what it is and what it affects in the corresponding FAQ from Steam Support.

This doesn't hide the information that your trust factor will be higher if you get prime status.

Like the prime status, this characteristic has a positive effect on your reputation.

Your trust factor will be higher if you link a phone number to your account.

Receiving a block indicates a gross violation of the rules, which greatly affects the trust factor in a negative direction.

Your trust factor will be lower if you have already been banned in other games, or if the VAC system has detected you have cheated in CS:GO, but hasn't had time to ban you yet.

If you play for a long time and don't provoke a decrease of the trust factor, then over time it will increase. This is guaranteed by the developers, who claim that if you just consistently play CS:GO, then this is enough to gradually improve the selection of matches.

Your trust factor will be higher if you play for a long time with no violations.

Your trust factor will be lower if you receive temporary game bans (for example, after griefing).

There are 2 modes in which you can run CS:GO - normal and trusted. By default, all players run the game in trusted mode, which blocks third-party files from interacting with the game. However, the user has the option to disable this feature, which in some cases results in a lower trust factor. You can read more about trusted mode in the relevant Steam Support FAQ.

Your trust factor may become lower if you run the game in normal (not trusted) mode.

On the Internet, you can find a huge number of myths and rumors related to the work of the trust factor. They have nothing to do with reality, but at the same time, they are repeatedly mentioned and quoted, which leads to the appearance of a huge amount of informational garbage. So here I will list the most popular misconceptions related to this topic to make you not consider fiction to be true.

There is no reliable way to find out your trust factor. You can only guess whether it is high or low based on the quality of the games played.

However, there are quite a few sites on the Internet that are ready to allegedly measure your trust factor (for example, https://faceitfinder.com/). In fact, such resources give out information that isn't related to you in any way, which doesn't make sense. Therefore, such services are absolutely useless.

Some users divide the trust factor into "green", "yellow" and "red", attributing certain properties to each category. In reality, there is no gradation.

One of the origins of this myth is that when starting a game in a lobby, players may receive a message that one of their allies has a lower trust factor than them. This message has a yellow background if the difference isn't very large, and red if the difference is significant:

This message is only a warning that the selection may change. It depends on the difference in the trust factor among the players in the lobby, but not on the specific value of any of them.

In fact, it doesn’t matter at all how much money you deposited into your account and how much you spent. This won't make the trust factor either higher or lower. Therefore, buying games or any actions with in-game items in order to improve the reputation is completely pointless.

The same goes for the Steam level, which has nothing to do with the trust factor.

Some users think that by taking screenshots, creating guides, posting comments, and participating in all sorts of activities, they improve their trust factor. Of course, this isn't so.

This popular myth leads to the flooding of the community with a large amount of garbage that doesn't have any sence.

It's also worth noting that by rewarding, commenting on, or liking user content (like this guide), you don't improve your trust factor in any way. But you do something nice for the author :)

In reality, you can neither raise nor lower your trust factor by changing your account settings (unless, of course, we say about authentication issues, like linking a phone). Some people advise you to make the profile public, as well as follow a number of other strange recommendations, but this willn't help you.

Make your profile settings the way that you personally will be comfortable.

Awards can beautify your profile, give Steam points, but nothing more. No rewards will increase your trust factor, whether it's in-game praise or community rewards.

Separately, it is worth noting that profile comments, "+rep"s, etc. also don't affect the trust factor in any way.

The original concept of the trust factor is based on the fact that it evaluates only you and your actions. Violations by other users can't have any effect on your reputation.

This means that if your friend or teammate violated the rules (for example, used cheats), then this can't affect you in any way. After all, you are just an ordinary person, and you might not even know about it. Therefore, all pieces of advice about what you need, for example, to remove owners of game bans from friends, is meaningless.

The user integrity rating mechanism works in isolation, and neither Valve employees, nor the technical support service, nor anyone else can directly work with someone's trust factor.

Of course, you can write an appeal or feedback to the official mail of the game developers (they recommend sending an email with the heading "Trust Factor Feedback" to CSGOTeamFeedback@valvesoftware.com), but tell you any hidden information or make there won't be any changes for sure.

Despite the fact that the Overwatch helps to identify violators, Overwatch investigators currently don't receive anything other than a bonus in the form of experience for correct verdicts. There is no reliable evidence that conscientious work as an investigator increases the trust factor.

Below are answers to the most frequently asked questions on this topic.

To improve your matchmaking, you should follow these guidelines:

• Link your phone and Steam Guard to your account. This is highly desirable not only to increase the trust factor, but also for security.
  
• Purchase Prime status.
  
• Play for a long time without breaking the rules and causing a decrease in the trust factor.

If the first two points have already been completed, then it is unlikely that it will be possible to immediately raise the trust factor. All you need to do is play and be a conscientious member of the community, and matchmaking will start to improve on its own.

There are situations when the trust factor suddenly decrease or doesn't rise for a long time. There are several reasons why this might happen:

• You have created one or more extra accounts that are being used or have been used to violate the rules. Since Steam monitors many user parameters, the system can associate a person with several accounts owned by him and lower the trust factor on all immediately in case of dishonest behavior.
  
• You used cheats. If you have downloaded/run any cheats, macros or programs that are introduced into the game process, then you will most likely be given a Owerwatch block or VAC ban. But since the anti-cheat does not issue a block immediately, but with a delay, while waiting for it, the trust factor drops significantly. This is to prevent cheaters from ruining the game for other players while they are still not banned.
  
• Someone used cheats on your account. All violating accounts are punished by lowering the trust factor and subsequent blocking, and it doesn't matter if you violated the rules, or a third party. Therefore, always take care of your security: don't log into your account on other people's unverified devices, don't give anyone access to your account, etc.

If you saw your actions at least in one paragraph, then you can forget about the high-quality selection of games in the near future.

As mentioned earlier, the principle of the trust factor is secret and has not been officially published anywhere. However, there are some sources from which you can learn certain details of his work:

• Valve's official statements. The company does not hide some facts about the work of the trust factor and openly publishes it. This information is the most reliable and was repeatedly used in the writing of this guide.
  
• Valve's trust factor patent. In 2020, Valve filed a patent for their matchmaking technology, which lists many indicators that can affect the trust factor. Of course, they did not fully reveal the secret of the operation of their technology, because not all of the indicators they listed actually affect the selection of games. The original document can be found here[patents.google.com] (the link is correct as of May 1, 2022).
  
• Experience of players. Many players constantly test the matchmaking system and share their impressions and observations on the Internet. Based on the large amount of information collected, certain conclusions can be drawn about which parameters affect the trust factor, and which ones are unlikely.

I hope this guide has been informative for you.

The original guide, which was written by me in Russian:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2710924494
Any questions left?
Did you find a mistake or bad translation?
Do you know of any other popular myths that could be added?

Write about it in the comments. I read them and will respond as soon as possible.