that really sucks if it's true and it seems completely pointless also

Honestly, it was a ton of work for Eric, since he was doing the validation manually. I am not sure how the other leagues do it, but he could easily front-load the work onto the league when they submit their requests in a way that he wants (current item ID, new name, etc) and just have a script to validate the data he gets from the leagues. That would be pretty trivial, honestly. I know that it is a lot of work for him right now, and considering they can barely log in a few times a year to add cosmetics and maps (not made by valve employees), I am not surprised they are doing this. They still rake in millions a year off of the store and cosmetics - they make 0 money off of the community medals. I truly hope they change their mind on this, because it fucks over the small tournaments and cups entirely, and certainly makes it harder for the leagues to attract new players.

Directly sure but competitive participants are more likely to be older and whale on the game. Not to mention like you said, attracting new players in another layer of the game breeds a healthy engagement leading more people to spend. While we're focused on our territory, what about charity medals? Are they seriously going to shoot every organization and event in the foot from this point on?

There could be a sizable loss, especially in more niche communities like MvM testing and events etc. I honestly figured this was a result of some technical issue with the item schema instead. I hope they are willing to at least work something out because we all know what happens when a feature is tabled by Valve for something better soon(tm).

that is so fucking unfortunate, oh well

You're preaching to the choir on that. But remember, it took them literal years, as a billion dollar company, to roll out a sub-par anticheat update that finally made their casual gamemode playable again after the bots. If it took them years to fix that - which certainly has a bigger impact on newer players than 3rd party leagues - I have little hope that they will put in the work to keep up with all the medals we hand out.

Perhaps they could look into using the steam profile badges system. While you wouldn’t get an in game item it would still let you have bragging rights. Would probably be easier to implement then having to go in and update the item schema each time a new medal is added.

HEARTBREAKING: Valve employee has to do work.

I'd like to know who the "couple of people" are because noone in any league whos actually in charge of handling medals is saying anything

I am think many people never have this medals. This medals have only very good team. Thats the first write that all participants have medal after only any team:). Only pro have this, another people ……… LOL

I wonder by how much (if at all) this will affect the rate comp takes in new players. How many people started because they find out if you gave comp a chance you get a free hat.

Also this obliterates charity events for a second time as if the first didn't kill them enough. Medals were practically a free 15-25k to the charity.

speak on that

Playerbases of all comp leagues get halved (at worst), most charities will disappear in the following months. Really strange that VALVe instead of coming up with a different system that would make the process of implementing and distributing medals for both parties easier would rather kill the whole thing off, but hey something something 19 year old game we don't deserve anything something something.

Is there any specific reason why valve would want the medals gone? I doubt it has something to do with performance issues since they have no problems with adding 20 unusual effects in each update. And besides, those medals already use an existing model so there really isn't anything new being added to the game whenever they get distributed. I guess, giving the bare minimum from a billion dollar company is too much to handle for valve these days

e

As far as I'm concerned potato tf has had huge issues distributing donor medals to the point where the people were emailing valve asking about the potato medals. sucks but what can ya do about people and their irrational need for an ingame cosmetic

https://i.ibb.co/q36Gh9CK/image.png

Almost all updates valve does include some tournament medals. I believe it’s mostly them not wanting to put work into something that doesnt generate direct profit for them (even though medals can be an incentive for people to keep playing the game). Nowadays, almost every community event has medals, even small 1–2 day cups and non-comp events which has become a bit overwhelming, imo

Also, I dont know if Eric and the tf team are busy working on something else, but the last time we sent an email asking for medals, it took more than a month to get a response. Before, we would usually get one within a few days

So because a small tournament announced 3 days ago has a 1500 dollar prizepool partially from a gambling site they kill off all comp, mvm and charity medals? Lol
And yeah, they are different entities but they reuse the same model, it's not like there are 300 copies of the same medal model, it's a few kb of code for each new medal, mind you they add like 16 maps every year so bloat isn't a problem for Eric apparently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N09ewF7K-c

This is due to a previous staff member who dealt with the automated system no longer being involved.

Here is a copy of an email from Eric that someone I know received within the last couple of days: