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Yes. I hadn't linked my Steam account before this either so I did that as a test. All of my Steam games have shown up in the Owned Items now, the Battletech stuff still has not.

I'll try again.
I can see your badges right now.
You should be good.
 
I think the custom avatars are not available because they would need to be reviewed to make sure they weren't obscene, offensive, etc... This was easier with the smaller community on the other forum, but with Paradox being such a large community, custom avatars would become unwieldy and take up too much of the staffs time.
IIRC it is (or used to be) possible to be awarded a custom avatar. My memory says something like X number of Posts (without any rules violations), or being a 'game expert' (see Blue Emu for example), or something along those lines.