sure you could tell but you'd need to know the game and spend time checking them

if they stagger in a specific pattern, for example a new achievement every x hours

or

they pop achievements out of order, for example 1000 kills before 100 kills

Personally I don't care about anyone elses achievements purely because cheating is so easy and I really can't be bothered to waste time checking

Originally posted by Supafly:

sure you could tell but you'd need to know the game and spend time checking them

if they stagger in a specific pattern, for example a new achievement every x hours

or

they pop achievements out of order, for example 1000 kills before 100 kills

Personally I don't care about anyone elses achievements purely because cheating is so easy and I really can't be bothered to waste time checking

Ah I gotcha, I was just wondering if a website like steamhunters would be like "ey yo this guy did something shady" but it seems like everyone's achievement totals on there are different than on steam. Some by as little as 5 or 6, or some as wide of a gap as 70 or 80

Achievement unlocked at the same moment isn't even a sure sign of SAM, could also be the game getting Steam achievements at some later date, after the player has unlocked a bunch of stuff.

Originally posted by Cephiros:

Ah I gotcha, I was just wondering if a website like steamhunters would be like "ey yo this guy did something shady" but it seems like everyone's achievement totals on there are different than on steam. Some by as little as 5 or 6, or some as wide of a gap as 70 or 80

Something shady?

When i switched to playing Star Wars The Old Republic on Steam rather than the external client i was given all previously earned achievements because achievements are linked to the same EA account. They all have the same date and timestamp.

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Originally posted by Cephiros:

Ah I gotcha, I was just wondering if a website like steamhunters would be like "ey yo this guy did something shady" but it seems like everyone's achievement totals on there are different than on steam. Some by as little as 5 or 6, or some as wide of a gap as 70 or 80

When i switched to playing Star Wars The Old Republic on Steam rather than the external client i was given all previously earned achievements because achievements are linked to the same EA account. They all have the same date and timestamp.

Yeah. When i was on holiday with no internet, playing things offline, when i came back i suddenly had loads of them when i reconnected.

Originally posted by Cephiros:

I saw a while ago that someone mentioned they won't add anyone who uses SAM, and I know most people who use it instantly unlock every achievement in one go, but is there a way that can detect even if they stagger the unlocks?

No, there's no way to tell. There might be symptoms, but they're never going to be conclusive, just plausible.

So ultimately you'll have to decide per case, but you'll still be guessing and you'll never know if you're wrong.

In general, DONT care about the achievements of other people.
Care about them as something YOU want to do for yourself, to challenge yourself or just for fun.
Its completely 100% irrelevant what other people do unless you have a need for achievements as a validation tool and to feel superior to others.

There's no real way to know 100%, as you can come up with any number of fairly valid reasons why someone's achievements look the way they do.

While you can be 'suspicious' depending on various factors, but even then you can get into these situations withotu SAM.

One time I was helping someone with their save game and when I loaded it to test out their issue, it granted me like a dozen achievements all at once because their save file was so far advanced. Now this 'looks' like I used SAM because of the quick succession of multiple achievements, but all I did was literally load someone else's save file to troubleshoot their issue.

Also the above can happen if you play offline, get achievements, then go back online later. The achievements get triggered and look like you got them 'all at once'.

Its really not worht caring if someone else is using SAM or not. If you are that hard up on this, maybe the achievements aren't the problem but rather that your own self worth is somehow tied to someone else

Why would you want to add someone as a friend when he sets rules. I mean why? Below this or that level, minimum 100 games etc etc. They are literally COLLECTING FRIENDS. Friends cannot be collected. If you ever see someone setting rules to be your friend just please run away from him. Don't ever look back again.

Edit / Fun Fact : I've used SAM in order to add some games to my showcase. It is NOT a big deal. If people are so obsessed with achievements then they had better get help.

FYI, the achievements system is not perfect either and is known to have hiccups at times.

There are games where the player is given random achievements for stuff they haven't done due to the devs messing it up. Rogue trader being one example at release.

Personally, I even encountered a situation where I had no achievements popping (despite having legitimately met the requirements), only to have like 5 of them pop in one go later on, all with the same timestamps. My guess is that the steam server has having a very bad day at that time. Devs fixing the achievement triggers in a patch could also result in the same thing.

When Valve merged HL2 and the episodes together launching the episodes would grant their achievements if you had them on the old version, but with a new timestamp; ie all of them at the same time.

Homeworld Remastered only grants achievemets when you close the game, so if you got more than one on the same session they'll have the same timestamp.

I'm sure those are only two examples of thousand of weird stuff going with achievements in steam games.

Originally posted by Yzal:

Homeworld Remastered only grants achievemets when you close the game, so if you got more than one on the same session they'll have the same timestamp.
.

Note some horror games do this so that achievements notifications don't appear in-game. This allows for you to get achievements but not break the immersion the horror game is going for.

what is SAM exactly? im a little bit dumb

Originally posted by DreznorTTG:

what is SAM exactly? im a little bit dumb

Steam Achievement Manager

Originally posted by Ogami:

In general, DONT care about the achievements of other people.
Care about them as something YOU want to do for yourself, to challenge yourself or just for fun.
Its completely 100% irrelevant what other people do unless you have a need for achievements as a validation tool and to feel superior to others.

This is absolutely the answer, don't let yourself be heavily influenced in any way by random people online.