Steam has revised its community awards—points are no longer transferred when they are received.

Steam has revised its community awards — points are no longer transferred when they are received! Yes, the clown is no longer among the icons.

An update has been released for Steam, which includes an update to community awards. The old set has been replaced by a new set of twelve badges with the same value.

As explained by Valve, the change should help highlight a wider range of outstanding work. The first edition badges can no longer be awarded.

As before, awards can be given for user reviews, forum posts, guides, screenshots, images, or mods for the workshop. No one will stop you from tagging your friend's Steam profile either. Awards are purchased with special points that are awarded for making purchases on the platform.

Previously, when a content creator received an award, they would receive a portion of the Steam points, but this feature has now been removed. We found that awards were being used to promote a relatively small set of attention-grabbing content, while a wider range of well-thought-out and original works were being ignored, Valve said. Now, awards are only used to express gratitude and recognize talented creators. All pending points will be transferred as usual, but new awards will not include points.

New community awards will be displayed in a dedicated showcase that can be added to your profile. Both first and second edition awards will be counted.

In other news: Steam has once again broken its peak online record. This happened last week, and then again on January 11. The most recent figure is 42,042,778 people.