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?
Are game achievements really yours? Or the property of the companies who made the games? If the achievements really are the players then shouldn’t they at least have the privilege of removing themselves from the achievements? Say you go to delete a game you don’t like, Imagine there’s an option remove all your achievement records as well as deleting the game.
In Canada and in the UK there are digital privacy policy rights, Shouldn’t that apply to the achievements one earns? For me it’s the permanency of the thing, I understand everyone is different, some like achievements, some refused to acknowledge achievements And I just want more leeway with the item I’ve purchased make it feel like the achievements are mine, Is that so wrong to want more control over the games we buy?
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
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.
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.
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.
I like reading the achievements to see what they thought was…important I guess. I usually don’t chase achievements on purpose though. And I never 100 percent. Closest game I have to that is uhhh Heaven’s Vault and the last two I need are. Hoo fuck. Complicated it looks like. Well one is. The other is more annoying it seems.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not asking to get rid of achievements, I’m asking for a compromise, I’m just questioning the importance of achievements, there are devices and or cheats to unlock all achievements and those who use mods and don’t care for what achievements they have, that’s not reliable developer data. Like my post states I see many sides of this discussion, pro achievements, neutral to achievements, and I guess in my case questioning of achievements. One’s either pro or neutral two game achievements, in truth I have yet to hear anyone who wants achievements GONE, or at the very least an option to clear or delete one’s achievement history, it’s the permanency of the thing for me you see.
I don’t think I’ve ever gone much out of my way for achievements for their own sake. Games where they also unlock stuff (eg: binding of isaac), sure, but that’s for the unlock.
I may have done some challenge stuff that I learned about for the achievement, but only because it seemed fun. I wouldn’t go very far into anti-fun just for an digital badge on my profile.
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.
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Are game achievements really yours? Or the property of the companies who made the games? If the achievements really are the players then shouldn’t they at least have the privilege of removing themselves from the achievements? Say you go to delete a game you don’t like, Imagine there’s an option remove all your achievement records as well as deleting the game. In Canada and in the UK there are digital privacy policy rights, Shouldn’t that apply to the achievements one earns? For me it’s the permanency of the thing, I understand everyone is different, some like achievements, some refused to acknowledge achievements And I just want more leeway with the item I’ve purchased make it feel like the achievements are mine, Is that so wrong to want more control over the games we buy?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
I like reading the achievements to see what they thought was…important I guess. I usually don’t chase achievements on purpose though. And I never 100 percent. Closest game I have to that is uhhh Heaven’s Vault and the last two I need are. Hoo fuck. Complicated it looks like. Well one is. The other is more annoying it seems.
I’m going back and getting some Xbox 360 achievements right now, but I don’t really do it in new games.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not asking to get rid of achievements, I’m asking for a compromise, I’m just questioning the importance of achievements, there are devices and or cheats to unlock all achievements and those who use mods and don’t care for what achievements they have, that’s not reliable developer data. Like my post states I see many sides of this discussion, pro achievements, neutral to achievements, and I guess in my case questioning of achievements. One’s either pro or neutral two game achievements, in truth I have yet to hear anyone who wants achievements GONE, or at the very least an option to clear or delete one’s achievement history, it’s the permanency of the thing for me you see.
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!
I don’t think I’ve ever gone much out of my way for achievements for their own sake. Games where they also unlock stuff (eg: binding of isaac), sure, but that’s for the unlock.
I may have done some challenge stuff that I learned about for the achievement, but only because it seemed fun. I wouldn’t go very far into anti-fun just for an digital badge on my profile.
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.