CS:GO changes in ranking system

Question

After the recent update in CS:GO, ranking became easier to increase until silver 3 which now houses the majority of silver 1s and it is confusing me.

What has changed in the ranking system to get players to silver 3 and then stop there?

Answer 1

So as far as i can tell the last updates had nothing to do with the ranking System of CS:GO

http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=730&enddate=1427871600&appgroupname=Counter-Strike%3A+Global+Offensive&feed=steam_updates

http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/category/updates/

what could be a possible reason for the "ranking became easier to increase until silver 3"- is that the game was in sale %. That happens every vew Month that the game gets 60% off and a whole new wave of new Players join CS:GO and so it gets easyer to climb the CS:GO carrer ledder.

But where do you have those informations about the Change of the ranking System and how do you know that the majority of Silver players are now Silver 3 ?

Answer 2

Occasionally, Valve issue what are known as VAC bans:

What is VAC?

If a user connects to a VAC-Secured server from a computer with identifiable cheats installed, the VAC system will ban the user from playing on VAC-Secured servers in the future.

While server admins may choose to ban specific players, server admins cannot VAC ban players. The VAC system is automated - contacting Steam Support to report cheaters is not necessary, nor will Steam Support act on any information provided.

The VAC system reliably detects cheats using their cheat signatures. Any third-party modification to a game designed to give one player an advantage over another is classified as a cheat or hack and will trigger a VAC ban. This includes modifications to a game's core executable files and dynamic link libraries.

The automated VAC bans can occur at any time, based on when cheats are identified. For example, according to this post, there was a massive wave of bans in December 2014, and there have likely been many since.

How do VAC bans affect you?

As players that are cheating are banned, you will often find that they have high ranks. So as these higher ranked players are banned from playing the game, more spaces in the higher ranks of the game become available and therefore (I'm not sure exactly how it works), people are often moved up so these spaces are filled.

More new players:

I believe this is also the case if more people purchase and start playing the game. So if there was a sale on, you would find a lot of new players in the game which by default would occupy the lowest ranks, pushing others up.

Here's some related reading:

Is the recent VAC bans the reason for everyone ranking up?

Answer 3

This was said by a valve employee directly to me

"We did initiate a slow shift of the Skill Group boundaries recently, due to an increase in players and a substantial upward drift over time in the skill groups distribution. While this won’t impact the quality of your matches (you are matched based on an underlying rank value and not the visible Skill Group), many players will experience a change in their Skill Group as the distribution returns to a bell curve centered approximately at Gold Nova 4. We also shipped a recent update that will automatically monitor and maintain consistency of the players skill groups distribution. That should eliminate the need to make such disruptive boundary adjustments in the future."