Steam Community Awards System Updated with Key Changes
Important changes are updating the Steam Community Awards application: changes related to the badges assigned to reviews, comments, and publisher posts. The update changes how the function of the system works and looks; it is already up and running.
Changes into the Award System
The makeover makes more thorough fundamental changes:
- Costing Standardized: All community awards are now with a standard cost of 500 Steam Points for the user giving it.
- Changes to Recipient Benefits: The recipient of an award no longer get Steam Points.
- Profile Statute: The recipient can now display all awards the recipient has gotten on his or her profile instead of points.
- Visual Changes: The award badges have been given visual change. The most used "clown" badge has changed to a laughing face icon.
Valve's Official Reasoning
According to Valve, these changes were made because the system was not being used as intended.
Originally, the idea was that Steam Community Rewards would not only be pretty cool but also give a tiny bit of Steam Points to someone, so that these could be rewarding for someone who creates some great content... But we found that, the awards were used mainly for a small population of content that was very flashy and eye-grabbing, while other thoughtful pieces that make the mainstay of good works do not get recognition.
Community Response and Interpretation
Yet many users interpret the opposite a tool for enforcing positive reactions and removing anything that was traditionally viewed as public negativity.
Why did you, Steam Bros, remove the option to clown or rooster reviews From this day forth, you are forcing positive reactions, and I refuse to waste billion points on that politeness.
Whereas often the "clown" badge was used by gamers to voice discontent upon developer posts that were addressing issues or mistakes, some view this as an effort to curb public negativity from the platform. This was also being compared to what YouTube did in changing its dislike feature.
