Valve has stated that new Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players will henceforth be required to pay for ranked play.
Drops, ranks, skill groups, and a free path to Prime (paid) matchmaking were once available to new players of the free-to-play competitive first-person shooter.
These perks, Valve claimed, have become “an incentive for bad actors to harm the experience of both new and existing users” over time.
New players now have a unique proposition. They can still play all game modes, community servers, and workshop maps, but no XP, rankings, drops, or skill groups will be awarded to them.