In public matchmaking games I'm often paired with players using Hitler, Mussolini and the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik facial photographs as profile images, among other fascist leaders and terrorists. This is not an exaggeration and is based on over 1000 hours of playtime.
Also major streamers are unable to play in official matchmaking due to graphic imagery (WARNING – very offensive footage).
There is "mini-scoreboard style" option in game settings to hide the images during gameplay, but the photos are displayed at least when you are killed, spectating and inspecting scoreboard.
Best Answer
Profile images should be hidden by blocking the domain(s) these images are loaded from. Add a string
0.0.0.0 cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com(use127.0.0.1if0.0.0.0doesn't work) to your operating system's hosts file, on Windows located in~\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts(for OS X and Linux see How-To Geek's guide). Unfortunately this also prevents some images on Steam store from loading and might have other side effects - it is recommended to comment out (or delete) the lines after playing by using//prefix on Windows (#seems to be the Unix alternative):For unknown reasons (on my system, may not affect everyone) profile images are blocked from loading in "deathmatch", "arms race", "demolition" and "casual" modes, but not in "competitive". However, it's possible that there are additional locations for profile mages which I'm not aware of.
This not a proper solution and will stop working if Valve moves profile images to another location. The game can also load all data from the same domain in the future, making blocking impossible without completely cutting internet access. Only Valve can effectively solve this issue, by implementing a setting to hide Steam profile images.