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> I don't believe TF2 has any sort of phone number system that I'm aware of. If there is one, it doesn't seem to function very well given the bot invasion over the last few years.

If I remember correctly, in TF2 competitive mode and Mann vs Machine (pve) gets locked if you don't have steam guard enabled. But you still have access to casual and community servers, which are what you will usually want to play.

CSGO used to require a phone number. It changed a bit to be "optional", but all that really means now is that they made the system more opaque.

It used to be that to get prime queue (or whatever it was called) you need to phone number, since the open queue was filled with hackers. The new systems still attempts to do the same, just without the hard boundary. You may end up in the hacker lobby, or you may not. You won't know.

One way of doing all this stuff is creating "haves" and "have nots" where those who have a higher credit score from age of account, phone number, etc, get better matchmaking (against players of a similar high score) than those who forgo those things.

I'm going off of memory mostly. I'm pretty sure all three asked me for a phone number to play ranked, but apparently it's optional at least for CS:GO. The impression I was given though was "give your phone number or you'll only ever play with hackers and smurfs" such that it was basically required.