Using environment variable in log directory changes it in actual value?

In TestComplete 11.3 we used environment variable %COMPUTERNAME% in the log directory you can set in current project properties so we could save TestComplete logs to a shared network dir. This enables us to sort log dirs by test environment (unfortunately, we couldn't have a central directory because different tests done on different pc's overwrite the index file)

Now that we use TC12.2+ , this environment variable is replaced with the actual value of that variable. This means that the moment we have changes in the .mds file, we have to change the log dir back to %COMPUTERNAME% again.

Was this change done on purpose?