Profile badge
Not to be confused with group badges, which also appear on user profiles.
For rules regarding usage as tournament prizing, see: Official tournament support § Profile Badges
Profile badges display under the avatar and username on the website.
Profile badges (commonly referred to as just badges) are small graphics on user profile pages awarded for various achievements. They are most commonly given as tournament and contest prizes, but have other uses, such as rewards for community contributors, Beatmap Spotlights, and continued group membership.
When hovering over a badge, a tooltip is shown with more details about why the badge was awarded.
Tournament seeding
Main page: Badge-weighted seeding
In the game client and on the website, badges are purely decorative. However, due to tournament prize badges showcasing players' performance, some tournaments have adopted seeding methods that factor in the amount of badges players have, commonly known as badge-weighted seeding (BWS).
History
On the old website, profile badges stacked under the username and title.
Rather than stacking horizontally in a container spanning the whole page, the old website stacked badges vertically between a user's username and country flag.
A side effect of this layout scheme was that the default, non-expanded height of userpages could be extended by means of earning more badges. While unintended, it became a running gag in the tournament community. Toy showcased this in a popular Tweet, showing off his record for most badges won at the time of posting.
Trivia
Tag Tournament first-place badge
- The first two profile badges were awarded to niedzwiedz1124 and White Wolf on 6 September, 2009, for winning Tag Tournament.
- Badges can link to other web pages for more context, like a tournament's forum page or a wiki entry.
- Badges prevent others from being able to take the player's current or past usernames.