ZWIFT Rides No Longer Count Towards Challenges?

Respectfully, I think you are only partially correct and have missed the point..  

As detailed by numerous people in the 16 pages of replies, many of us ARE recording these activities on Garmin devices (like TACX trainers).  The issue is that when activity data passes through a third-party (e.g. Zwift), Garmin has made the decision to enforce the rule of crippling of value-added features of that data when it enters Connect.

This was a policy decision and not a technical one - this worked for YEARS before now, and that is what has really riled people up.  The clandestine way that in-flight challenge progress was unilaterally wiped out as a result of this change by Garmin shows appalling lack of transparency.  I have yet to see any reasonable justification why this 'fix' was made and I'd love to have a reference to any Release Note or forum posting that says why this change was done.  Someone please enlighten me, if there such a reference.

Like people have said numerous times: many of us find badges highly motivational and if people want to cheat and do all sorts of data source trickery to pad the numbers, who really cares?  They are only cheating themselves and hardly a reason behind Garmin making this change that affects everyone.

Does the firstbeat metric need to be implemented only on the device? My point is that if you have all the data from recording an activity in zwift and you sync that activity to garmin, firstbeat metrics calculations can be done off device when the data is synced and imported into garmin. Garmin owns firstbeat anyway so they have a common interest in granting access to the ability to do that. 

It's a business reason, not a technical reason. And it's at the expense of user experience. Same as the badges. 

Firstbeat (and really things like Training Stats) is a completely different animal.  As others have indicated, these are done in the firmware of the device.  There could be very valid technical reasons why Garmin chose to implement these calculations as such.  Maybe these calcs need access to the raw data, at the frequency of collection, or maybe they do not want to implement these calcs on the website because of complexity/computational concerns.  Yes, it may have been a business reason why they did this, but they made the initial decision and stuck with it - not the same with this badges fiasco.

Aaa10247 said:

Does the firstbeat metric need to be implemented only on the device?

Well, this is off-topic here, and should be rather taken to a different thread (though there are already many of them discussing it), but just to answer your question: yes, it does need to be implmented on the device. Only the watch has all the real-time data needed by the FirstBeat algorithm - especially the HR Variability - it is not available at later point, and it is not supplied by 3rd parties either. Besides that, originally (before Garmin acquired FirstBeat), the technology was strictly bound to the device by a license, hence any post-processing was not allowed. That may changed recently,  but the system is already constructed in such way, not enabling any post-processing, hence also no processing of imported data (even if it included the HRV data, which it does not). The processing simply happens on the watch, not in the app, or on the server.

Garmin fan-boi much?

Registering a Garmin device results in double reporting and the data recorded via the bike computer doesn’t line up even close with zwift. 

The change Garmin made is BS and they should know it. 

I just got back on my bike trainer a few days ago and noticed the same thing. I used Zwift to record my workout on my Tacx Vortex trainer. I even tried switching my workout type from "virtual ride" to "indoor cycling" and nothing changed. This is an extreme disappointment and something which needs addressed. Fix it Garmin.

I use a tacx trainer(garmin) with a garmin heart rate strap and garmin cadence but record my rides on Zwift. Why have they stopped counting towards badges? Surely you want to encourage people to ride garmin products. I record outdoor rides on Garmin devices, forerunner and Edge 1000.  The badges are a real motivator and seasonal weather makes the use of a trainer a better option at certain times of the year. By not allowing virtual miles to count from a game that is considered to be world leading, UCI uptake etc seems a little unnecessary. 

It seems very shortsighted to remove this facility, I had been considering using Garmin over Strava as my primary home for activities but this change has made me reconsider.

Do you have any plans to revert this back to how it was?

Lengthy discussion on this - ZWIFT Rides No Longer Count Towards Challenges?

It appears that Zwift activities were counting towards challenges when they should not have been. It was fixed with a recent update. Badge challenge activities must be performed on a Garmin device and uploaded directly to Garmin Connect or the Garmin Connect app for it to count. I will add you to a feature request ticket we have open for Zwift rides in Connect to count towards challenges/badges. 

This offends me too. Also that thing that you don't get cycling badges for "virtual ride" type of activities (both riding and indoor riding badges).