...on the Steam forums. People there will actively troll and harass, to farm "clown awards" which yield points. So you get rewarded for acting like a turd burglar on there, because you can use those points for avatars and profile goodies.

It is getting abused like the negative rep used to by the guys with the botter accounts. Just goes to show you, no system is perfect, not even the Almighty Steam's.

Well, sure. That's part of why Reddit axed their rewards. Steam probably will too.

those morons are all over the Doom + Doom II forum on steam right now.

Did something happen on Doom + Doom II forum?

on here? no on steam, just weird and stupid threads like "what is dos" "why does my sister hate doom" "are doom fans fans of doom" just stupid shit like that or finally but its dying down recently was "CAN WE HAEV MOUS LOOk????"

Sounds like there trying to meme or just be funny. This why I don't take most steam reviews seriously.

nvm

nvm - I misread your comment

some are, but it happens nearly all the time and to the point in my opinion its hard to communicate issues or just have discussions but its steam so at this point its almost S.O.P there, GOGs forum has similar flaws too.

This is the crux of the problem - people on Steam literally get rewarded for being asshats.

Yup sadly.

I think the way different threads in the Steam forum are also displayed in the All tab when you open its Community section partly contributes to the majority of the conduct that many Steam users seem to have there. What I mean here is that when you open the Community section, the All tab will be cluttered with many different posts made by the users, some threads, guides, but I guess mostly screenshots taken by them. As a result those first two things I mentioned probably get responded in the same manner that the rest of the meme screenshots and other silly threads got replied with simply because those users are still in the mood of being silly after seeing the many different funny posts.

I just checked and I have thousands and thousands of these points. What are we even meant to do with them?

Apparently that is what you get with a 'very' competitive minded crowd and strict rulesets.... not going near any other additions that may or may not include the words adult, elder, wise

You can buy yourself emotes, avatars, animated stickers to use in chat, profile backgrounds, avatar borders, all kinds of goodies.

I will say that the guy I had the exchange with that facilitated this thread, was party to giving me enough clown awards that I walked away with about 3200 points in the past 24 hours.

An avatar is 1k points, so you can see how invested he was in "clowning" me even though all that happened was I got rewarded for attempting to put him in his place, in a somewhat toxic fashion.

I'm amazed at how I got rewarded for what I said. I can see now how people who frequent the Steam forums get that negativity constantly validated, and it kind of explains gaming society to a degree, since so many gamers use Steam regularly.

If I were an academic, I'd write a paper on it, but I'm not, and nobody wants my opinions anyway.