Rio sticker changes, new storage units and more
Topic: Rio Major Update - Valve changed sticker designs!
After last week's release of the stickers for the upcoming 2022 Rio Major, Valve was facing significant backlash from a large portion of the Counter Strike community. Along with poor readability, several player’s signatures were rejected, and some were even omitted from the release entirely. Flooding social media, dislike for the stickers was voiced by investors, professional players, and especially content creators and influencers. However, as if by some sort of miracle, Valve answered the cries of the disappointed and released an update yesterday that made several big changes to the Rio stickers and more.
Along with improving readability of the Rio 2022 stickers, Valve also added new items for the major, as well as improving the user interface for storage units. Overall, this update is a much needed reassurance of the communities trust in Valve. Here is EsportFire’s complete breakdown of yesterday’s update and everything you need to know about the changes.
Backstory: “The Worst Stickers Ever”
In case some readers weren’t aware, the 21 October release of the much awaited 2022 Rio Major stickers was quite the disappointment to investors, content creators, and even several of the players participating in the major. The main issue: the background of the stickers was a bright floral assortment of colors, and the signatures were white. This made the stickers almost unreadable when applied as the signatures essentially blended in with the bright background. Even worse than the paper stickers were the holographic ones, which made the issue 10x worse with the addition of the holographic effect to the blended stickers.
Along with poor readability of the stickers, the designs of the signatures were similarly lack-luster. Several unique designs made by players were rejected for more simple and minimalistic designs, severely taking away from the potential of unique crafts with the stickers. Several tournament participators released their rejected ideas for signatures via Twitter, and when the community realized what they had missed out on, they were more than upset.
A perfect exemplification of the issues with the Rio stickers can be drawn from those of BIG Clan. Firstly, the BIG sticker is one of the biggest mistakes made by Valve in years: the white BIG logo is pasted over a white background to create a practically unreadable sticker. Along with this, despite having ample time to change the stickers due to the delayed sticker release, Josef "faveN" Baumann, who will be missing the major due to health reasons, has a sticker in the game rather than his replacement, Elias "s1n" Stein. This was especially disappointing as s1n has never had a sticker in the game and expressed his immense excitement to finally have his own sticker via Twitter shortly before the release.
Sticker Update
Less than a week after the original release of the stickers and the immense community backlash, Valve responded by updating the stickers to improve readability. Their solution to the problem: add shadows to the Paper and Holo stickers to create a contrast with the background. The glitter stickers were left untouched as the bold lines of the signatures made for far better readability than the Holo and Paper, and the gold were left as there was no readability issue with the gold and black contrast. While adding a shadow to each sticker may be viewed as a lazy solution, it is far better than before, and is quite good considering the time frame the developers had to mend the issue. Most importantly, Valve admitted their fault by responding to the community backlash rather than just leaving the stickers in shambles and the community in disappointment. Below is a comparison of the ropz Holo before and after the update.
Additional Rio 2022 Items
Along with improving the stickers, Valve made further additions to the Rio 2022 items. Players can now purchase the “Rio 2022 Storage Unit with Stickers” and “Rio 2022 Storage Unit with Glitter Stickers” in the in-game menu alongside sticker capsules and the Viewer Passes. Each unit comes stocked with 145 stickers of the corresponding type(paper or glitter): one for every team and player in the Major. The storage unit can be immediately renamed and all stickers can be removed and placed in a player’s inventory or another storage unit. The paper storage unit cost $16.99, and the glitter version costs $64.99.
Updates to Storage Units
With the arrival of the Rio 2022 Storage Units, Valve also updated the user interface of all storage units to make depositing, withdrawing, and inspecting items far easier. Players can now open storage units and inspect individual items within without having to withdraw them into their inventory. Along with this, a much needed improvement to the sorting system has arrived, with players now being able to sort storage units by Newest, Quality, Alphabetical, Equip Slot, Collection, and Equipped. Lastly, empty storage units can now be deleted from the player’s inventory if wanted.
Minor Ancient Update
While the bulk of the update related to Rio 2022 stickers and items, Valve also fixed a few minor issues on Ancient, including a boost exploit and a graphical bug.
Conclusion
Overall, this much needed update is an answer to the cries of tens of thousands of investors, content creators, and tournament participants. While the solutions are far from perfect, they are an impressive improvement considering the short time frame for the developers, and are a sign of a reassurance of trust in Valve. The Rio 2022 storage units, while expensive, are a neat addition to the collection of major items, and the improved user interface of storage units is a much needed change.
