FACEIT block limit: how many players can you block, and what to do when it's full

FACEIT has two features that are both called “block”, and a lot of people mix them up. One is social and free. The other one keeps a player out of your matches, and that one is limited to a handful of slots and needs a subscription.

Profile block vs. matchmaking block

The profile block is available to everyone. You open the player's profile, click the three dots next to Follow and choose Block. According to FACEIT, the blocked player can no longer:

• see your posts
• tag you
• send you invites
• add you as a friend
• send you messages

That's it. Nothing on that list touches matchmaking. You can profile-block someone and still get them as a teammate in your next game.

The matchmaking block is the one people usually mean. FACEIT describes it as choosing “players you want to avoid being matched with”. It comes with a subscription (3 slots with Plus, 5 with Premium) and currently only applies to CS2 matches. Once the slots are full, adding someone new means taking someone else off.

Why 3 slots fill up in a week

If you play a lot at one Elo range, you see the same few hundred players over and over. The griefer from Tuesday, the player who called your mum a lot of things on Thursday, the one who plays with their music on voice all game. Three slots aren't a lot for that.

We can see this in how people use dodged.it. The bot doesn't block anyone. It tracks players and tells you when they finish a match. But the number of players people choose to keep an eye on says something:

Most chats watch one to three players, but 24.7% watch more than three, and a few group chats follow dozens. Some of those are friends people want to queue with, which the chart can't separate. Still, one chat in four wants to watch more players than FACEIT Plus lets you block.

What to do when your block list is full

1. Keep slots for the people you actually meet

A block is only worth something if the player plays at your Elo, in your region, at your hours. Someone you met once at 3am on a different server is a wasted slot. Rotate the list: when a blocked player hasn't shown up in weeks, swap them for the one who has.

2. Report, so FACEIT can deal with the worst ones

Blocking only protects you. Reporting can actually get a player removed. Of the 344 players our users track, 16 are banned by FACEIT right now, and 12 of those bans are for verbal abuse or unsportsmanlike conduct. It does happen, it just takes a while.

3. Vote-kick griefers in Super Matches

Super Matches and Premium Super Matches have vote-kick. Everyone else on the team has to agree, and a kicked player can't rejoin. It isn't available in the regular queue. The guide on avoiding toxic teammates covers this and the leaver Elo rules.

4. Don't be in the queue when they are

The one thing that needs no slot at all is timing. In our data, the median player starts their next match 14.5 minutes after their last one ends, and 40.9% are back within 10 minutes (the full analysis is here). If you know someone just finished, waiting 10 to 15 minutes before you queue does a lot of what a block would do. If you know they're mid-match, you have about half an hour.

That's what dodged.it is for. You send the Telegram bot /track nickname, and when that player finishes a match you get a message with the map, the score and their stats. /list shows everyone you track at once, each with a risk level (HIGH, MIGHT BE IN GAME, LOW or SLEEPING) based on how long ago their last match ended.