Greetings. If the development team actually reads it, I congratulate you on taking a more responsible stance as of recent by starting to expand privacy options. I wish you the creative freedom and to be strong enough to be responsible with it. Let’s hope it’s only the beginning. Stop punishing people for actively using the features you introduced, finish their development, so we can finally have choices.

The reason I’m here is because Steam support can’t help me with a seemingly simple enough request of deleting some of the badges I crafted and don’t want to have anymore. Now, I’m sure there are technical limitations in the current system, as it’s often the case. However, this flawed system leads us to all sorts of legit customization requests and reasons why they should be worked on and implemented.

What people want are quite basic, vital privacy and customization options: delete, hide certain crafted badges or choose a previous badge level, a privacy option to hide profile level. We want to be able to delete any badge we crafted by action (meaning game and event badges), hide any badge we wish, and choose which level to showcase from previously crafted levels. The coolest way to do the latter is choosing a certain previous level in the main badges page and choosing which level to put in the badges showcase at the same time. Imagine being able to showcase all 5 levels of the same badge. How cool would that be?

Now let’s go to reasons. First of all, it’s a purchase, no matter how you look at it. We pay money for cards to buy a desired badge. This already comes with expected common options associated with making a purchase. Which comes down to: if we want to get rid of a purchase, we should be able to. If we want to showcase only certain purchases to our friends or hide them all without hiding the whole profile, we should be able to do so as well.

Secondly, if it’s not obvious enough, we’re talking about personal profiles here – they make up our public gaming image, our gaming avatars. One of the major points in having a personal, customizable profile with different showcases is to pick and choose what we want to put on display, what we prefer to keep to ourselves, and what is no longer a desired part of a profile at all. In other words, deep customization and privacy options are of utmost importance in any profiles system, with a natural demand of them being able to be tailored down to the last bit of information. This includes badges and levels. They may not be personal information, but they’re still information, as well as decoration.

As you see, there are a lot of reasons to implement more control over crafted badges and levels with meaningful choices. Among them are: flexible privacy options, information customization, freedom of decoration, customer satisfaction, more interest in using the badges system overall.

As the support suggests, posting about this in the ideas section of discussions is the only way for their development team to take notice that it needs to be done. So if you want more customization for badges to happen, consider posting about this yourself.

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram. Pretty much what Steam resembles with many of its features. Now, you may argue it's not the same because people use them differently, but it’s not the case as many people use Steam profiles to express themselves and socially connect. However, the point is, with all these things people often do something because they don't know better yet, eventually changing their choices. People grow older, they mature, tastes and preferences change over the years, as do their consumer habits and internet habits. Now imagine if you couldn't delete or hide any photos or posts from Facebook/Instagram, or couldn't change your information. That's exactly what it feels like to people who want to delete or hide some badges/levels and cannot do so.

It's about the freedom of choice, it's about having vital options as a paying customer and a user. Currently, it's a one-way street, a choice we make doesn't work both ways. If we choose to have a badge, it's like a commitment for life. If I buy something in a store, no one then forces me to keep it for life and showcase to people. It's not user-friendly and anti-consumer.

I know a thing or two about studies on customer psychology, so I can assure you this is hurting both customer experience and profits in a long run. Not a good look for a respectable company either. If a feature is offered, it’s the major responsibility to provide people with all essential choices they might need to make.


Everyone have their own reasons. Why someone’s reason should be solid for anyone else? A sun goddess could whisper into their ear that this is the way to go and it still wouldn’t change a fact that these are basic, vital options everyone should have in any kind of personal profiles system. The point here is why everyone should have such options, not why someone in particular might want to use them.

Although, I fully support an advanced hide option for badges like we have for games, which masquerades itself as a deletion, as a customer and an owner of my personal profile I believe in my right to be able to delete any information I put there myself by my actions. If I willingly or unknowingly participated in an event which awarded me with a badge or crafted a badge with trading cards, I should be reserved a right to withdraw my consent to have these badges. If something is a choice, it should work both ways, not as a commitment for life. Steam needs to respect a freedom of choice when it comes to personal profiles if they want their customization system to be taken seriously.

Until the entire userbase will participate in a poll questioning who wants to delete, hide, or downgrade their badges to a certain level, you can't say how many want this because you don't have any statistical data to back it up. The majority of users haven't asked for a lot of things: like a new Steam Points Shop with all kinds of animated stuff, a new library interface, a new chat functionality, or the badges themselves in the first place. Yet here we are, with lots of people enjoying new customization options they knew nothing about before that. Besides, these requests have been around for years, ever since badges were implemented, and new people still keep coming to express them when they see a thread like this.

The reason most people aren't complaining is because most people can't be bothered to go out of their way to complain about something publicly, unless it's a really big problem for them, directly affecting their enjoyment. Naturally, most people aren't gonna have a big problem if they can't customize some part of their profile. Not everyone is into constant heavy customizaton of a profile. Doesn't mean they won't possibly enjoy a new option when it's presented to them. Don't presume what people might enjoy or what choice will they make. Everyone makes different choices at different points in time, you can't predict it. People aren't stones, they evolve. A competent development team should be concerned with how developed and innovative a feature is, if it has all possible options and quality of life people might want to use, not with how many are already vocal about those absent options.

First and foremost, people want to do this for their own satisfaction and a peace of mind. If a profile owner cares, that’s already someone and enough. Secondly, of course some are concerned with what image they project to others with their profile. You don’t go outside in clothes you don’t like expecting people to like you. Look up the comment #810 in this thread for a well put, fun analogy of this.

Encouragement works in different ways. If a feature is underdeveloped, then at some point it becomes discouraging to keep using it. The more options people have, the more they're encouraged to use a feature and engaged with it. Otherwise, Valve wouldn't have added extended showcases and other stuff from the points shop. For instance, I would be crafting many more badges all the time if I was able to delete the ones that no longer satisfy my taste. As it is now, I lost motivation to keep looking for more interesting badges and themes to implement in my collection as long as I can’t change what’s already crafted.

We already have the ability to delete games or whole accounts with adequate safety measures in place and a grace period. Yes, games can be restored, but accounts cannot. What would stop someone from regretting a deleted account and bothering the support from a new account? You can’t fail-safe against a human factor of all sorts of users, but if all the needed safety measures present, then there’s no excuse to not have basic options like this for any information on an account.

We have enough of security steps anyone could ask for: a confirmation through the mobile app, a confirmation e-mail, a grace period up to 30 days before a deletion. If it’s really a serious concern, all security steps could be required at once. If all the security already in place is not enough, then the same argument can be made against the deletion of a whole account.

Currently when people don’t want strangers to know this information, they will resort to putting a whole profile on private. Some of them would be comfortable leaving their profile partially public if they could fully control privacy of each part. Those who want to use this information for reassurance of trades or friend requests, will do so either way. It’s unfortunate that people can’t hide a profile level alone, or certain badges, or even reduce said level by deleting badges, thus resorting to a fully private profile. When it comes to essential badges like Years of Service and Games Collector, we should be able to hide them, since they can’t be deleted for the obvious reason of being an integral part of profiles. Maybe some people just don’t like how they look or want this information to be private.

Well, people don’t expect a refund when they delete games or delete their whole accounts – both options already available to us with easy measures for safety. Personally, I don't care about a refund. It’s already a waste to me if I can’t choose what to do with something I paid money for. It would be a fair deal if I’ll actually have choices of what to do with badges. I paid money for something, it was fun, now I want to get rid of it when it’s no longer fun, instead of being punished for actively engaging with a feature.

Of course, there’s always ways to make the experience even more fun by making the system more creative and meaningful. For instance, make deletion of badges in a form of salvaging them into whatever Steam developers will see fit: gems, points, cards, etc. Although, we already get a value in a form of game related items for crafting them in the first place, so the value for salvaging could be symbolic if at all.

Firstly, it’s not impossible as it’s been tested by lowering the experience of Games Collector badge through deletion of games. It might require additional coding, but it’s not impossible. Reducing the leveling experience, thus lowering a profile level is what some people want to achieve by deleting badges, along with cleaning up badges, me included. Nothing wrong about this, it will only look consistent this way if deleted badges will take the associated experience with them. It might look weird if hidden badges will do the same, but it could be presented as a choice for a user. More coding, I know, but hey, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

They developed a lot of difficult features nobody asked for and any of which could cause problems. It's almost as if it's their job perfecting the experience of using Steam while making sure Steam client works with all the new features. This is customer relations we're talking about. Not providing your customers with all possible basic options is detrimental to any business. Steam development team knows this. They also know underdeveloped features are not very engaging, thus aren’t used much and don’t help with customer satisfaction. Mind you, they refuse to address and fix the issue via a support ticket, otherwise I wouldn't have a problem with the absence of an implemented option.

It's in human nature to regret our past choices, change our tastes and preferences as we mature and form our personalities. Profile pages of any sort serve as public images. Much like with anything else in life, for many people it takes trial and error to find an image which reflects their personality the best or is comfortable for their experience of using a social network like Steam. I liked something and tried what it’s like to have it. Then I grew older and changed my tastes. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to craft new badges, I just don’t want to have some of the old ones anymore. Some people realized they don’t like badges at all and want a totally minimalistic profile. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the absence of choice.

We all have different personalities, different tastes and views, different consumer habits, different learning curves, different needs from live services. What we all do have in common is the need to have options according to all of the above. Don't discard a need for some options just because it's not something that you might have a use of. If we’ll pick and choose what essential options to allow, next time it could be options you need and choices that you want to make which are overlooked. Some folks thought it's insane to want to delete games and should not be allowed, yet many people enjoy this new choice they have.