Steam's Second Community Awards Tackle Clown Point Farming

Several years ago, Steam made a decision to implement reddit-like community awards, where players would be able to utilise the points they earned to give accolades to pieces of community they deemed worthy. At the time, Valve mentioned these as an idea to "tip" creators for incredible artwork, community guides, and more... but what the team didn't expect was that it would lead to years of devaluing every Steam community area. Valve has been hard at work to fix the mistakes of the implementation of the Jester award, which became a notorious ways for users to fight against each other, with the now notoriously-known Jester Farming method. Whether this was through low-effort, meme reviews (which forced Steam to alter the entire system algorithm overall), guides (such as "How to Open the Game"), to even community trolling in the discussions. This was an easy way for users to farm the emotional reactions of other community members, getting awarded with points for their efforts, which can otherwise only be earned by spending money. The tipping culture, instead, became a baiting culture, and it devalued every area of community that Steam has on offer for years. Valve has moved on from this approach, though it's not entirely removing the Steam Community Awards — instead, reworking them for a new positive-friendly approach. This new update removes toxic-looking reactions (such as the Jester that we were talking about) for more positive ones, all the while, nixing the tipping system overall. With all of the new awards on offer, the previous ones have been removed and replaced with 12 colourful ones. Showing appreciation is now limited to a select few options, with each conveying a different "emotion" to make it easier to make your decision. This also comes with a standard 500 points price for all of the awards, or about a £3.82 tip. The update has been met with mixed reactions from the community overall. While Jester farming going away is — ultimately — a positive, the removal of tipping for points, the standard 500 point price, and the overall look of the emojis have been the subject of controversy. The price inflation for points becomes substantial for non-regular spenders. Including the Seasonal Badge (priced at 40,000 points every six months), Points Shop Items (with some games having dozens and demanding hundreds of pounds to buy them all out), and no other way to get points, it's made it challenging to keep up with the purchasing of Steam cosmetics. Love it or hate it, Steam Community Awards Second Edition seem to be here to stay, and only time will tell if Valve will affect the numbers to compensate for the removal of tipping.