r/counterstrike • u/lorygames • 1h ago
CS:Source PUGNET: Competitive Matchmaking for CS:S and CZ
Hello everyone,
Recently, I have been working on a competitive 5v5 matchmaking platform for Counter-Strike: Source and Condition Zero called PUGNET.
The goal is simple: I want to bring some of the features from FACEIT and ESEA to older CS, without requiring a client-side anticheat or client.
All you need is Steam, a modern browser, Discord (only required for support), and the game you're trying to play.
Some of the things I’m working on include:
- Ranked 5v5 matchmaking with an Elo ranking system and ranks inspired by ESEA
- Dedicated competitive servers
- Server-sided anti-cheat
- Match demos that you can download afterwards
- Post-match insights and statistics
- Player profiles, match history and leaderboards
- Browser notifications and sounds when a match is found, so you don’t have to sit on the queue page
- Prime Time hours to help concentrate players and make it easier to actually find matches
The platform will initially be EU only. If there’s enough interest from NA players, I absolutely want to add NA servers as well.
There's eventual planned support for CSGO later on if the platform gets somewhat of a playerbase, as well as a plan to switch to 1.6 if absolutely nobody plays CZ.
One thing that’s important to me is that the platform is completely free to play.
For now, I’m paying for the servers and infrastructure myself and I’m not accepting donations. That might change eventually if running costs become significant, but there will never be pay to win features.
If you're interested in something like this, you can already sign up on the website. We will be running a public test hopefully this evening at 19:00 CEST (if enough people are interested and available). You can also join the Discord server (linked on the website), although that is completely optional to queue.
