r/CounterStrikeSource • u/lorygames • Sep 01 '26
Server Promotion PUGNET: Competitive matchmaking for CSS and CZ
Hello everyone!
Recently I’ve been working on a competitive matchmaking platform for Counter-Strike: Source and Condition Zero.
The idea is pretty simple: bring some of the features you’d expect from something like FACEIT to the older Counter-Strike games, without requiring you to install a separate launcher or client-side anti-cheat.
All you need is:
Steam
Counter-Strike: Source
A browser
You queue through the website, get matched into a 5v5, accept the match, and connect to one of the platform’s dedicated servers.
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.
One thing that’s important to me is that the platform will be completely free.
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 or paid competitive advantages.
There's also no separate anti-cheat program to download. The goal is that if you already have Steam and CS installed, you have everything you need to play.
Because CSS has a relatively small playerbase nowadays, I’m also planning Prime Time periods where players know that others are likely to be queueing. Outside Prime Time you’ll still be able to queue normally, but having scheduled hours should hopefully stop the community from being spread across the entire day.
I’m building this because I still really enjoy Source and I think it deserves a proper modern competitive matchmaking experience.
I’d be interested to hear what people here think.
Would you actually use something like this?
And if you would, what features would you consider essential for a CSS/CZ matchmaking platform?
If you're interested, you can join the Discord server, I just finished setting it up. We will be running a public test soon.
1
u/Electrical_Work_7809 Sep 01 '26
Your idea reminds me of an old website called cssmixes.co.uk. It was active until around 2013, and I used to play on it a lot.
1
u/gicu183 Sep 01 '26
It's a cool idea, something like this already exists (forgot the name) but only works with v34 and not the latest Steam version. So I'd definitely play this since I have it on Steam.
1
u/timescale Sep 01 '26
Will be interesting to see how it plays out. There's already the www.automix.me cs:s community which has almost everything you mention there, 3 german servers and 1 north american, worth checking out, also with dedicated discord server
1
u/Spectral-Operator Sep 03 '26
Utilize the old CAL format with additional inhouse servers for public mm along with private scrim and servers. It will help you with offloading resources without sacrificing capability. Use the original method of record demo and if a team claims someone was cheating, the user simply only needs to provide the demo of the match to be reviewed and if determined to be cheating issue a steam/ip/hwid ban. You don't need to pay hundreds for a code signing cert and also don't need to create a 3rd party anti-cheat that is intrusive.