How to Mute Someone in CS:GO – Explained
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Since its release in 2012, CS:GO garnered a massive following worldwide, especially after the 2018 decision to make it free to play to any registered Steam user. When the number of players grows over three-quarters of a million[1], it’s getting hard to perform any crowd control and make sure that everyone is following a common sense of conduct. Of course, massive offenses result in a ban, but it’s impossible to trace every swear word or hyperactive voice chat. This, in turn, means that global servers are full of misbehaved users who will not hesitate to call you names or just keep on shouting anything that comes to their head. This obviously ruins the gameplay experience.
At some point, there is no other way but to mute the players who bother you or totally silence the voice messages. Fortunately, with the help of this guide, you can discover how to mute someone in CSGO without blocking them, as the user interface allows for a couple of simple ways to do this.
What are the methods of muting someone in CSGO?
First of all, the most straightforward and easily controllable method of muting another player is to do it in the scoreboard. You can do this at the beginning of the round or while you’re waiting for the next one, so you don’t waste time clicking in the score list while in the heat of the battle. If the general voice chat is being a problem, you can use a line of command to disable it completely. This also has some downsides, as it might cut you off from the good part of the communication. Fortunately, there is also a way to bind the command responsible for turning the voice chat on and off to a certain key. This way, if you are in a clutch situation, it’s enough to push one key to cut off the noise, so you can focus on the skirmish, and once it’s over, push it once more to enable the voice chat back.
So how do you mute someone in CSGO?
Now we’ll talk about how to mute someone in CSGO in detail. If you’re going with the scoreboard option, here’s what you should do step by step.
- Hold TAB to show the scoreboard.
- Right-click to release the cursor.
- Point the cursor on the player you would like to mute and click them.
- From the pop-up menu, choose “Block Communication”.
- Release TAB to hide the scoreboard.
This way, you will not hear the voice messages from that person and, additionally, you will not receive their chat messages.
Is there a CSGO auto-mute?
It’s a relatively new feature, but since February 2020 Valve collects information on abusive users and in case of multiple reports ban them from using voice chat for a time. It’s possible to use the in-game function to report a player with a specific note that they’re being abusive on the voice chat. In the less severe cases, for instance by the first abuse threshold, a player will be able to resume using voice chat when they gain the next EXP level. It’s also possible to funnel a banned player’s voice if you want to continue listening to him despite other people’s reports. The system is still being tested, so make sure to feedback Valve on anything that seems out of line.
Can you disable voice in the game completely?
Yes, easily. To do this, follow these steps:
- Open the console by pressing
` - When you’re there, type
voice_enable 0and hit enter. This way all the voice is muted. - To turn it back on, you can just type the same command, but change “0” to “1”.
It might be a little clumsy to do this mid-game. Imagine trying to operate in console command while being surrounded by the enemy team. Luckily, it’s possible to assign this command to one key by binding. You can do it as follows:
- Open the console by pressing
` - Now, instead, type
bind * „voice_enable 0″, where * is the key you want to use to disable voice chat. Hit enter. - You should also bind a key that allows you to turn it on again. Type
bind ^ „voice_enable 1″, where ^ is the key you will use to enable voice chat. Hit enter to confirm.
Also, if you prefer not to turn the voice chat completely off, you can change the command to voice_scale #, # being a number from 0 (muted) to 1 (full volume). This way, you can use the bound key to turn chat volume down to, say, 0.2 (20%), so it remains there just in case but doesn’t disturb that much. It’s also a good answer to how to mute someone in the CSGO lobby, as this parameter also works outside the match, so remember about it while you’re getting ready to play with your friends.
Unfortunately, there’s no good news for those wondering how to mute someone in your queue in CSGO completely. The only way you can protect yourself from spam is to change the settings of your lobby so that only invited people can join.
Also, there are also some methods that use commands to disable the chat display if you’re ultimately fed up with the communication system. This is better performed by people who are very familiar with CSGO console commands, as you can easily destabilize your user interface this way.
Why should you mute someone in CSGO?
Just imagine a moment of focus – you’re in a hot spot, you’re waiting for enemies to start walking down the line. Suddenly, one of the less adolescent players starts shouting at his microphone trying to tell people what to do. Even worse, they might be listening to some music that bleeds through the voice chat. You might get distracted to a point where you lose the element of surprise and not react quickly enough, because you didn’t hear the enemy team coming. There are dozens of situations like these we could list here. If it’s just one person in the game spamming, you can choose to block them. If you’re unfortunate to land a game with several players like these, keys bound with toggling general voice chat come in handy.
Is there anything to remember once you know how to mute someone in CS GO? Take into consideration that disabling the voice chat for good isn’t recommended. This way you are detached from other players and can only guess their actions by the way they move around. Even when not everyone is playing by the book, CS:GO is still a multiplayer team game and is heavily based on your interaction with other players. If the voice chat is too loud or just unintelligible, use the key binding and dynamically change the voice chat settings in case of clutch situations.
Summary
CS:GO allows both mute single players by blocking their communication in the scoreboard or disable voice messages completely. You should’ve already noticed that there’s no way specifically how to mute someone in CSGO console, you can just disable the whole voice chat this way. Use it accordingly to the situation to maximize pleasure coming from a good online match.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/808630/csgo-number-players-steam/
