Buy custom animated profile pictures in the Points Shop

[ocksie]

some would say this would be a moderation disaster for Valve but honestly i don't see it being much different from regular profile pictures, plus we already have a handful of pretty questionable animated pictures in the points shop anyways.
in order to prevent this feature from completely replacing the avatars in the points shop though, it could cost say, ~5000-10000 points to upload an animated profile picture, that could maybe go into a list of self-uploaded pictures so you can switch between them at any time (similar to picking an animated avatar already).
it'd add an extra layer of customization to people's profiles in a way that hopefully wouldn't entirely replace the already existing avatars, and would also give more use for steam points for those who don't care about backgrounds/showcases etc.

[Gwarsbane]

Its much different because of the time it takes to verify the image doesn't break any rules. A static image takes 1 to 2 seconds to verify. An animated one takes how ever long the animation is along with the fact that if they take their eyes off the screen they have to check it all over again. So it'll take 10 or 20 or 30 times longer to verify.

If they were to ever put something like this into place it would have to be at least 100,000 points and it should be a very limited thing. Every time you want to change it, its 100,000+ points. And if it fails you should not get those 100,000+ points back and should get a perma community ban for even trying.

You need to remember there are over 1 billion accounts on Steam. 140+ million active per month. Only 350ish people work directly for Valve and of those around 75ish work on Steam.

The moderation that Valve pays for is super slow already and not accurate already, now you want to slow them down every more to look through custom animated images that they have to sit there and watch for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds or more to verify that it doesn't break the rules.


Personally I don't think ANYTHING on the forums or on a profile should be animated. They should have an off button to turn off all animation before adding something as annoying as that, but they haven't and I doubt they will.

[ocksie]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

Its much different because of the time it takes to verify the image doesn't break any rules. A static image takes 1 to 2 seconds to verify. An animated one takes how ever long the animation is along with the fact that if they take their eyes off the screen they have to check it all over again. So it'll take 10 or 20 or 30 times longer to verify.

as long as you had an animation length and fps cap, it wouldn't be all that bad, at most a valve employee would have to watch it loop a couple times just in case of any hidden frames but assuming a low enough frame count and fps it would be equally as easy as just looking at a static pfp, at least imo.

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

If they were to ever put something like this into place it would have to be at least 100,000 points and it should be a very limited thing. Every time you want to change it, its 100,000+ points. And if it fails you should not get those 100,000+ points back and should get a perma community ban for even trying.

100,000+ points is unbelievably excessive, I get the point of making it rare but it doesn't need to be £763 rare. 10,000 or at a push 20,000 would already be more than enough considering a large portion of users probably don't even know the point shop exists

an idea i just had for making it more rare without just jacking the price up could be just making it a limited time event, every once in a while giving players the option to buy it and the rest of the time it's not available

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

You need to remember there are over 1 billion accounts on Steam. 140+ million active per month. Only 350ish people work directly for Valve and of those around 75ish work on Steam.

The moderation that Valve pays for is super slow already and not accurate already, now you want to slow them down every more to look through custom animated images that they have to sit there and watch for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds or more to verify that it doesn't break the rules.

similar thing i've said before, i honestly don't think having the occasional animated picture to look at would make things much harder for valve to moderate, considering how small the percentage of animated profile pictures would actually be compared to normal ones, not to mention if there was a length/fps cap. I wouldn't expect valve to allow 10+ second long .gfis if they actually implemented this, probably like 5 seconds at most

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

Personally I don't think ANYTHING on the forums or on a profile should be animated. They should have an off button to turn off all animation before adding something as annoying as that, but they haven't and I doubt they will.

i'm surprised this was never a thing though, it makes sense to have as an option especially for people who might be photosensitive or motion sick

idk why i responded to this paragraph by paragraph i feel like i'm in a debate or something but yea i just don't think it would be nearly as big of a deal as people make it out to be, i don't think it would be a moderating nightmare and i honestly don't imagine custom animated pictures being extremely common if they have a good enough price and are tucked away in the points shop somewhere