I really like completing games. Finding every collectible, exploring every nook and cranny... I've been trying to achieve 100% in save files since the days of the PS2, and achievements are a very natural extension of that.

Steam achievements, in particular, were remarkable in this regard: the variety was immense, the community was friendly, and the price of games was absurdly cheap, which was something of great value to teenager me. And a lot of that is still valid today.

Unfortunately, from around 2017 and counting, the whole achievement ecosystem got flooded with those cheap trash titles that give you thousands of achievements and another 100% for basically nothing - the proverbial shovelware. And, like many completionists, I fell in for the scam and got myself swamped on that stuff. They were extremely alluring at the time, and I didn't know any better.

Concurrently, there were also a lot of free games coming out with trivially easy achievements, such as visual novels. I would sometimes just set them to max speed and get all the achievements without even knowing what the novel was about, because the number needed to go up. Up, up and up. Another similar issue happened with demos, where you are able to just go through a couple of minutes of content for a free 100%. It doesn't matter if you spent 300 hours completing The Witcher 3 or 5 minutes going through a demo - they are all equal in the eyes of Steam.

Finally, I got really pissed off at DLC achievements, particularly those from delisted titles that you are no longer able to buy. PlayStation, for instance, has solved this by creating separate lists for DLC achievements/trophies, so I can get a platinum for the base game and see the number go up by +1 without having to worry about expensive or even unobtainable DLC. But Steam has no such system in place, making you buy new content just to get your 100% back after they add new DLC with achievements.

Finally, there's the matter of cheaters: while I have nothing to prove to anyone, it is undeniably heart-wrenching how any semblance of rankings and competition, both in regards to rarity, number of perfected games, and completion percentage, are nullified by the existence of people who mass-unlock achievements through illegitimate methods.

All of these things left a sour taste in my mouth, and I no longer saw the point in hunting for more achievements when my list was so irredeemably contaminated by trash titles and games impossible to 100%, on an ecosystem that was less-than-friendly to this type of experience. I had a big falling out around 2019, and the worst part was knowing that most of it was self-inflicted.

I should have been getting 100% in games that I enjoyed. That should be the only criterion by whether I decide to perfect a game or not. But, instead, I was buying and playing through a whole lot of trash just to see two numbers increase.

But not all was lost.

Things did improve, though: as of 2023, Valve got really good at removing shovelware games from our achievement statistics, and I can just pretend that most of those I played don't exist anymore. Many demos, too, also stopped counting.

Furthermore, the recent 100% achievement page comes sorted, by default, by playtime, and looking at the first 2/3rds of this list actually makes me happy. There's still some trash if you scroll down to the bottom third (as most trash titles only take a few minutes, or maybe a few hours at most), but this new visual update to the achievement list fills me with a renewed sense of proverbial pride and accomplishment.

There is still a lot I think Valve should improve: removing every single 100% from demos would be a start, and a legitimate way of deleting achievements would be downright impressive. But will I start doing some serious achievement hunting anytime soon, now that things are looking better?

Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever be into serious achievement hunting on Steam again. Even if the achievement system magically fixes itself, there's still the fact that I have also grown more and more bitter about PC as a platform in general: a miserable GPU market, endless launchers, inexplicable stutters, aggressive DRM, and constantly being reminded of work while sitting at another desk all contribute to my growing disdain for the platform I called home for 12 years. The last major game I played on PC was Baldur's Gate 3, and I was completely broken after spending my first 2 hours with the game fiddling around settings to get it to run at an acceptable performance level for my hardware. Never again.

I've found a lot of success on PlayStation [psnprofiles.com], and I think I'll stay there for a while. I've even fallen into a silly pattern of getting a platinum for games I've 100%'d on Steam, which is a great way to experience the classics again. Trophy hunting on PlayStation is one of the most fulfilling gaming experiences I've had in ages, and being able to buy and collect physical games is the cherry on top.

I'll still pop into Steam once in a while to fiddle around with some old favourites, to play games that are only available on PC, and to sample out some games that I find in my library and get curious about. But other than that? I'm happy on PlayStation, with some Switch on the side, and that's where I'll stay from now on.

Original 19-Mar-2023, revised 14-May-2025