Beginning next midnight EST and every day thereafter, rating decays will be in effect.
In layman's terms, everyone at or above 200 rating will lose 3 rating each day. Each time they play a rated multiplayer game, they will get a grace period from rating decays for the next 5 days.
On the more technical side, a player's displayed rating is actually based on two things: a best guess of their rating and a degree of uncertainty about that guess. As you play, the best guess value is adjusted based on the game result, and the uncertainty value decreases. What the rating decay will do is increase the uncertainty each day. This means it will be fairly easy to recover from a ratings drop even after multiple days, simply by playing a few more games.
This is a much-requested feature that we feel will eliminate top list squatting and encourage more active competition. You might have also noticed that the Rankings page has been updated to now show the top 100.
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