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?
I personally think that all PC achievements are meaningless since it’s easy as fuck to use an outside tool to unlock them instantly with things like SAM - Steam Achievement Manager.
Even if that wasn’t the case, generally most achievements are not challenges; they are grinds. I have always ignored the grindy ones (“kill a million enemies” type shit).
Really the only thing that got me to even be an achievement hunter for a while, was Playstation’s now defunct Stars program. You were able to earn actual money by simply earning trophies. The rarer the trophy, the more points it was worth so 100% things for the platinum trophies was worth it. I ended up buying like half the games I own on PS5 through that system.
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.
In some games they so provide an extra challenge that can be fun to go for. It of course depends on the game and the achievement. I’ve had games where I enjoyed going for achievements and some where I never even looked at them
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)
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.
I’d say you’re definitely overthinking it. I’ll look at the high end achievements if I’ve finished a game I like, as that could point me towards things I may have missed during my initial playthrough, but other than that, I don’t think about them at all.
If I actually do 100% a major game (Like I did for Fallout New Vegas) I’m proud to have accomplished it, but I’m not losing sleep over the other 3000 unfinished titles I’ve played.
They were never relevant. It’s a Skinner box mechanic that really triggers certain people’s dopamine production in an addictive manner.
We have very different understandings of what a Skinner box is, and I don’t think achievements count.
Variably timed “rewards” which trick your brain into performing repetitive tasks for longer than you normally would? Achievements definitely count.
They tell you exactly what rewards you with them in most cases. They’re finite and not random. They’re hard coded and easily searchable. The point of a Skinner box is that the mouse doesn’t know when the next reward comes. I’m not prepared to say “most” definitively, but at least many achievements don’t require any repetition and are given out for one bespoke action exactly one time, often just as checkpoints for how far you made it into a story.
Most people do not look up all the achievements before they play. So, to them, it appears random, as they just pop up spontaneously as they play. And they usually start of with a bunch and get further apart as time goes on and the harder achievements take longer, so the time varies in much the same way as all those mobile games that have some sort of action economy
I don’t buy it. If achievements were addictive, more people would finish games, and one of the things that we learned from achievements data is that even a 50% rate of finishing a game is rare. The Skinner box conditions behavior when you know that doing a thing sometimes results in a reward or the avoidance of a punishment, and that doesn’t mesh with an achievement that only rewards an action once rather than continually handing it out occasionally for repeating an action.
There are people that buy awful games just to 100% them and get the achievements. They actively search out things which give easy achievements. Not because the game might be fun, just to see number go up.
Not everything is addictive in the same way to everyone. So I don’t really care what you “buy”, it’s a behavior that exists in the real world.
Idgaf about achievements. It always was a scattered mess and (imo) epeen length comparison. I play for the experience and fun of it.
Ymmv. Have fun however you’re having it!
They are marketing shenanigans, they always have been. Those who care about them is the people who are sensible to such marketing tactics.
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.
I pay pretty much zero attention to achievements.
Warning, this mod will disable achievements.
Disable away motherfucker!
'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.
Side note but I really don’t know that drill. I’ve used Linux since 2010 and only begrudgingly dual booted in the years before proton was a thing, but now have used it as my only OS since Valve started developing it.
Highly recommend trying it out if you like to tinker. Modding things like Bethesda games is possible, but it’s been a while since I played one so I can’t remember all the specifics.
Achievements are cool sometimes. I did some challenge runs on Factorio like “there is no spoon” which is launching a rocket in under 8 hours. There is almost always a mod that turns achievements back on for most games fwiw
I like achievements. I don’t compare them to anybody else, they just give me a goal and personal sense of accomplishment. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth would have been a lot less satisfying to complete if I didn’t get to see 641/641 achievements on my profile.
In 99% of games I’ve played that disable achievements with mods, there’s a way around that on PC. In the aforementioned The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, as long as you beat the first “final” boss a single time, you can use mods freely. In Fallout 4 as you’ve mentioned… there’s a mod that re-enables achievements. So this is an irrelevant issue to me.
As far as your other question goes, I’d be more than happy to see achievements be opt-out. On Steam you can always hide your library or use SAM to get rid of them all when you’re done playing, but that’s obviously not ideal.
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.
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’m going back and getting some Xbox 360 achievements right now, but I don’t really do it in new games.
