Just to give legitimacy to Sladow's claim, I am indeed not satisfied with how that particular avatar, which is the FAF Veteran avatar, was handled.
When creating it, I envisioned it to be given out to direct contributors to the FAF project, who are ready to pass on their duties and "retire". My trigger was Rowey, yes, but just like anyone else, it wasn't a personal avatar for him - but for any members who contributed to the community directly (and yes, Rowey turned out to be a special case, given he returned back to 'active duty'). I wouldn't really mind if it were given out to the active 'monsters' that keep this amazing project going (Jip, Brutus, Sheikah, BlackYps, Balthazar - only to name a few), but I think the team avatars are much more appropriate for that (and they were quite some work as well). The avatar was not meant for members that play a lot, or participated in many tournaments (a.k.a. 'regular' members, despite how active they may be).
As with all my work, I give all the use rights to FAF, and as such I probably don't have a direct say what a particular avatar will be used for, but I do feel like this is in poor taste.
That being said, I'm not here to admonish people and turn this into a witch hunt, so I propose we do come up with a fitting avatar that can be cool in it's own way, that could be used as a reward for those who either refuse monetary rewards, or are unable to collect their rewards for any reason. We could even make two, one for each of those situations. I hope that with that, we can keep the "FAF Veteran" avatar assigned to appropriate people (and this would entail taking it away from those that aren't), but also make sure everyone feels good. With that, I hope I soon get a request over at the discord #promo-projects for this exact cause.