Hello Community!
I've reached out to Valve and have been working with them to come to a solution. Recently, six backgrounds for Major\Minor were deleted. Users found these items removed from their inventory entirely. When purchased from the Community Market, no item is received. Valve enables developers to upload backgrounds that players can unlock. This is a VERY serious issue, as users are spending their money and receiving no items. And users who have previously spent their money are finding their items completely gone.
There is usually a limit of only 10 backgrounds allowed. But this is where things get odd; When I was uploading my backgrounds, the limit (for some unknown reason) was not in effect. There was no warning telling me that I was uploading too many, and everything looked as if it was going smoothly to me. In fact, the launch went through smoothly (a launch requires Valve's approval before they flip the switch), and everything was fine.
But just recently, I had to change the badges and card set for Major\Minor. I introduced an Acheron card into the set, replacing Save -- and converted two badges to depict Singe and Acheron instead of the previous characters. But Valve could not approve these edits, as there were more than 10 backgrounds. Whatever had let me launch with more than 10 backgrounds was no longer in effect; and six backgrounds had to be removed in order to publish the final badge and card changes. There honestly is no explanation for this.
It's never happened before.
Valve is unsure of how this happened.
They haven't seen it happen before either.
They are actively working on this and are taking it very seriously.
This is not an issue that affects Major\Minor only. It has implications larger than my own application -- regarding Steam's inventory management system.
Here is an official statement from Valve on the matter:
"We are still discussing internally how to handle this. The partner site shouldn't have let you create as many backgrounds as you did, so we need to assess how that happened. We likely won't be able to reverse to go back to 16 backgrounds though since that breaks a larger number of things. We are sorry you're in this situation, and we will do our best to figure out something that works for you, the community and your game."
As you can see, Valve is working on things internally. As they take these matters seriously, I do not think it will be too much longer until they figure something out that helps all of us.
I have also been affected by this deletion. Many fan favorite backgrounds had to be removed because of this. But Valve is looking into what action should be taken. Please discuss, and thank you for bearing with us during this odd time.
The backgrounds in question are as follows:
Backstage Chaos! (Shock and Rocker)
Dookster at Large (Rook)
In Service of the King (Velasquez and Save)
Major\Minor (Cast Shot)
Singe's Office (Singe and Inumi)
Tavern Temptation (Trish)
Kyle "Klace" Lambert
Tall Tail Studios
Project Lead and Head Writer