Playing Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition on PC and I hit one of those classic “Bugthesda” moments: last time this level crashed to desktop with no warning, and today my screen randomly auto‑adjusted mid‑game and threw my aim and immersion completely off.
I did the usual ritual: check for updates → Microsoft Store updates → verify game files → repair the library. You know the drill.
But honestly, that’s not the part that’s really stuck in my head.
What’s been gnawing at me is this: in 2026, are achievements still relevant in the way platforms treat them—especially when mods disable them anyway?
A few things bother me:
Mods disable achievements (even on consoles now in some cases), so for a lot of players they’re already meaningless mechanically.
There’s no way to opt out. If I don’t want a permanent public record of what I did or didn’t do in a game, tough luck.
Even if I uninstall or refund a game, the partial achievement list just sits there on my profile forever like a half‑finished diary I never agreed to publish.
What I wish existed is something like:
a “no achievements” mode where I can play purely for the experience, and my achievement list just shows as “inaccessible/opted out” to others
or at least the ability to hide or erase achievements for specific games if I decide I don’t want that history attached to me anymore
I’m not pretending I can change the minds of big companies who still design like it’s 2005, but I am genuinely curious what different types of players think:
Achievement hunters: Do you care if others can opt out, or does that not affect you at all?
Mod users (PC and console): Since mods often disable achievements, do they still matter to you in any way?
Everyone else: Do you ever think about the permanence of your achievement history, or is it just background noise?
Is it time for platforms to give us a real opt‑out or ephemeral play option, or am I overthinking something that most people are fine with?
Say what you will I love my cheevos
I just want to say thanks for reminding me to play The Stanley Parable to get the Go Outside achievement. I beat it by 6 years! I hadn’t played it in 11 years!
I really like seeing the breakdown of what percentage of players have done X, Y, or Z compared to me. When achievements were first implemented, it was the first time developers had real data about how people played their games, and it influenced how games would change after that. I don’t think many people are circumventing them via mods percentage-wise, so they’re mostly a good representation of the sample size’s behavior. I rarely go for all of them, averaging about 35% of achievements per game, but I did just 100% Escape from Ever After not long ago, and part of that was getting all of the achievements in it, which was a fun little extra activity to do in a game I really enjoyed.
If you really don’t want that record attached to you, you could prioritize playing games from GOG via offline installer, I suppose.
I only care about achievements in games I enjoy. Also while I agree it’s useful telemetry, let’s not kid ourselves: game companies track a lot more than what achievements could ever do by themselves.
Achievements are background noise for me, I only chase them if they sound fun to chase. I have done all the achievements for a few games intentionally, but only if there are like a dozen or less that don’t just happen naturally by playing.
I save scummed for elden ring to get all endings because I don’t like replaying games and wanted to see all endings with my playerc think I got all acheivements but 1 without trying to get them all. I was trying to get every piece of equipment and every spell/incantation/summon in the game.
I did the same thing even on my PS5. Saved the file like normal which saved to the cloud, then i disabled cloud saving and proceeded to do everything else off that save to get each ending and then copy that cloud save back down overriding my local save. I was shocked it worked so well. I think i ran into 1 issue with getting all the weapons since 1 could not be obtained again in the first play through but i had my friend join my game and he gave me the weapon and laughed when we realized it worked. I love that i not only beat that game but also got every achievement, so i guess that means i do enjoy them.
I pay pretty much zero attention to achievements.
Warning, this mod will disable achievements.
Disable away motherfucker!
They are marketing shenanigans, they always have been. Those who care about them is the people who are sensible to such marketing tactics.
They are for marketing but not in the obvious way. Achievements really exist to tell game developers what parts of their game people are actually playing. Sure, some obscure achievements may be very hard to get and thus not tell them anything useful, but a lot of games have super basic checkpoint “achievements” like “start the game for the first time” or “play through the first level.”
With enough of these, a game developer can tell what parts of their game were entertaining and engaging and what parts were not. Sometimes this information can be used to decide how to improve the game. Other times it may only be useful as a lesson for future games (by that developer) to learn from.
They used to have value for single player games like Final Fantasy series. Achievements were hints to the hidden parts of the game.
100%ing a game doesn’t mean as much when games are released in beta and get seasonal content updates.
Hate to break it to you but 100%ing a game means jack shit in every context.
It’s called personal satisfaction my dude.
Guys, many of you fail to realize this but achievements, and the system surveillance required to validate them are valuable data to game publishers.
They arent going away without a fight.
Developers really don’t need achievements for telemetry purposes, there are far better ways to accomplish that. At worst you can see them as a form of marketing, when you see people in your friends list getting them, but that’s about it.
This is exactly why games have achievements for things like making it through the tutorial, completing Act II, or beating the final boss. It lets devs know how far players get through their games before loosing interest.
I usually don’t hunt them but some times i do, if it’s a game I’m particularly interested in and i don’t have to go out of my way too much for them. I also like how you can tell a story with them. In the Talos Principle for example there are very branching options that you decide on by being attentive and by testing your philosophy. On my achievement showcase i can now show which path i went on my favourite game.
There’s also the aspect of hints. They hung at little extra challenges and generally tell you there’s something left to experience in the game. For example BG3: after finishing the game I have only 26/54, so i know there’s a lot of content I’ve not explored. I might eventually do another run of it. Had i like 40 something achievements I’d be like "yeah idk that little extra content isn’t worth digging for 60 hours again. I also like the aspect of seeing the achievements of friends showing up in my timeline so i know if i can talk about a certain part of the game without spoiling it.Oh also if you don’t want some achievements to show up for friends, you can hide the game and activity for others.
'Chievos are a very personal thing, they were never important unless you personally thought they were. If you don’t think they’re important anymore, then great. If you want to chievo hunt, also great. Gaming is what you make of it.
If someone feels more accomplished because they have a little gold star next to what is otherwise the same experience, they need to make something else of it.
It’s gatekeeping, but if it influences how games are designed I’d rather they not.
On PC there are almost always mods to turn achievements back on, regardless of how many mods you have installed.
I like achievements because they give me an idea how much of the game I’ve already experienced, and because they sometimes encourage me to change up my play style. And getting a very rare achievement is always nice. They’re not super important though, so if you don’t want them I’m totally OK with that.
Steam does have an option to hide all of your activity in a certain game, but not to cherry pick certain achievements. I think it’s so you don’t have to broadcast your 235 hours spent 100%ing Kink Simulator to your entire friends list.
Could be an age thing. 20 years ago on the 360, achievements I cared about. By the middle of the PS4 generation, I stopped caring about PS trophies. On Steam, never cared about Steam achievements. 20 years ago being a completionist was an interest of mine which included achievements. Today, I’m fine not finishing games
Definitely an age thing, I remember a time video games didn’t have achievements, you played the game 'cause you liked the game, game companies kept track by virtue of their sails, now these days it’s how long a player plays, what achievements have been unlocked etc. I keep thinking that it’s OCD, the permanence of the thing, something I can’t change, but maybe you’re right, maybe it’s old age.
I saw one other person mention RetroAchevements and I second their love for adding it to older games-- in these cases, though, they’re a passion projects by fans and while they maintain a leaderboard, the main thing to be is it legitimizes some retro gaming by disabling save states and cheats while still having sets for modded games. I think it sets a good standard for what the industry should be doing.
For instance, it checks those boxes; it’s opt-in by default and there are privacy options, although hardcore mode requires rich presence for enforcement of the rules. There’s still the softcore option though. The sets have rules about what you can make, leaving grindy and multiplayer stuff as subsets. And again, modded/hacked roms get support, since all it takes is a user wanting to develop it (except Pokemon Clover, that’s banned for pretty good reasons lol)
At this point, it feels more legit than Steam, Xbox or PlayStation achievements. If the industry adopted a similar model, most of your concerns would be addressed although it’s likely impossible since developers often have to write achievement code that fits all platforms.
(Oh, and if you can’t tell, my answers to the questions, mod use makes it irrelevant on PC and permanence does matter to me, although not for any good reason: RA badges are nice to look at. Lol)
I love achievements to the point I’ve been replaying a ton of old games just cause of retroachievements. As for what I’d think of others not wanting them, I don’t really care what you do. I do see a lot of pushback against achievements, especially whenever the topic of Nintendo adding them comes up since they’re the only platform without it, so a way to just permanently system or game wide disable them would be nice for those people. Something easy to access so you wouldn’t have to dig in menus for it.
