Proposal: Report System or Removal for Unobtainable Achievements

All Discussions > Steam Forums > Suggestions / Ideas > Topic Details

TTV/ZultekZ 9 hours ago

Hello everyone,

I wanted to start a discussion about something that affects a lot of achievement hunters and completionists on Steam — the issue of unobtainable achievements and the lack of an official system to handle them.

The Problem

There are quite a few games on Steam that are impossible to 100% complete, not because of player skill, but due to:

[]Achievements tied to features that no longer exist (e.g., multiplayer servers shut down)[]Bugs preventing triggers from working correctly[]Achievements that were never implemented properly by the developers[]Abandoned early-access titles or delisted games that still count towards your completion stats
In some cases, even the base game itself is broken, making any progress impossible.

Example cases include:

Game C — Achievement code references a deprecated variable, meaning it never unlocks.

Why This Matters

For many players, achievement hunting is a core motivation to play and buy games. Having titles that can never be completed due to developer oversight or abandoned content is both discouraging and misleading.

It also affects third-party tracking websites like AStats[astats.io], https://completionist.me, or SteamHunters[steamhunters.com], which specifically list and track unobtainable achievements. These sites even tag them as “impossible without hacks”, showing that this is a known and widespread issue.

Suggested Solutions

1. Report System:
Allow players to report achievements that are believed to be broken or unobtainable.
– Reports could require proof (video/screenshots/logs).
– After verification, Steam could flag the achievement as “Unobtainable”.
2. Exclusion from Global Stats:
Achievements verified as broken could be excluded from the player’s total completion percentage.
3. Developer Transparency:
Encourage developers to mark outdated or bugged achievements within Steamworks (for example, through a “Legacy” or “Disabled” flag).
4. Optional Removal:
If a game becomes permanently unmaintained and achievements are proven impossible, Steam could automatically hide them from global completion tracking.

Why This Would Benefit Everyone

Helps completionists maintain fair 100% records and perfect games
Encourages developers to maintain achievement integrity
Improves trust and quality perception of the Steam ecosystem
Reduces frustration and unnecessary cheating/hacking attempts

Conclusion

This isn’t about making games “easier.” It’s about fairness and transparency.
If a player is willing to dedicate hundreds of hours to complete a game legitimately, they deserve to know whether it’s even possible in the first place.

A simple report or flagging system would go a long way toward improving the experience for everyone.

What do you think? Would you support a report or verification system for broken achievements?
Let’s discuss it — maybe if enough players care, Valve will consider implementing something like this.

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Showing 1-15 of 22 comments

Black Blade 8 hours ago

I don't think it should remove completely from the complisinaest, but simply not count to users that cant get it, so users that may have worked hard to get the achivment that later become impossible to get can still be counted
Beside that I do agree something of this sort will be good to have, as its nicer to not have a % lower for games you simply can never really complete

76561199540158642 8 hours ago

they should remove the pointless achievments from steam all together, since almost anyone who is doing achivements are using sams anyway to fake it.

VaLiuM 8 hours ago

How do you prove you have met the criteria for not getting a broken achievement you otherwise should have gotten? Not talking about the obvious ones you have mentioned.

How should VALVe staff sift thru thousands of images, videos, logs from thousands of games without knowing the ins and outs of the specific game published by someone else?

How many reports would be required for VALVe to even look?

Also the devs for the specific game make use of a Steamworks feature, not VALVe forcing them to do so and since it's completely optional, i doubt VALVe would have any say in involving themselves into a third party game and third party developers business.

Last edited by VaLiuM; 8 hours ago

Black Blade 8 hours ago

Originally posted by Golden Unicorn:
they should remove the pointless achievments from steam all together, since almost anyone who is doing achivements are using sams anyway to fake it.

I think that is going a little far on it
Some chose to take it that way, some do not
There is a few groups on Steam about 100% the game, if almost everyone used SAM then this groups will have not been the size they where, becouse why will anyone bother joining?

Black Blade 8 hours ago

Originally posted by VaLiuM:
How do you prove you have met the criteria for not getting a broken achievement you otherwise should have gotten? Not talking about the obvious ones you have mentioned.

How should VALVe staff sift thru thousands of images, videos, logs from thousands of games without knowing the ins and outs of the specific game published by someone else?

How many reports would be required for VALVe to even look?

Also the devs for the specific game make use of a Steamworks features, not VALVe forcing them to do so and since it's completely optional, i doubt VALVe would have any say in involving themselves into a third party game and third party developers business.

I think you just take the path of Tags, you don't need Valve to greenlight one by one, you simply let the community vote, if it pass some amount from the tottal precent of the community reporting it broken, then its marked broken
This or that could also be simply one more thing to put on the developer to do, developers like the game Splitgate has recently closed there online servers, they give users warning so they can get the achievements before the game closed down (the game uses server side achivments so when the servers close the achivments will be impossible to get)
If Valve give an option to mark a game achivment as borken on the Steamwork system, I am pretty sure they will have done it, allowing users that got it to keep it, and users that did not to opt out of what they dont have counting to there %
Over all the answer could be a sort of a mix, between reporting and just let the developer deal with it in there steamworks system

FilthyAnimal 8 hours ago

I think that achievements are un obtainable for varios reasons like bugged, servers closed etc, we should ne able to open them manually or somethting or by buying them with Steam points to 100% the game

Black Blade 8 hours ago

Originally posted by FilthyAnimal:
I think that achievements are un obtainable for varios reasons like bugged, servers closed etc, we should ne able to open them manually or somethting or by buying them with Steam points to 100% the game

I dont think Steam points should be involved in that, achivments are an added enjoyment for games, the points is something you gain on Steam for an unrelated topic, dont see much of a reason fro them to be connected
And if its impossible to get I think it should be more disabled for who did not get it already, not just open for them

FilthyAnimal 8 hours ago

Originally posted by Black Blade:
Originally posted by FilthyAnimal:
I think that achievements are un obtainable for varios reasons like bugged, servers closed etc, we should ne able to open them manually or somethting or by buying them with Steam points to 100% the game
I dont think Steam points should be involved in that, achivments are an added enjoyment for games, the points is something you gain on Steam for an unrelated topic, dont see much of a reason fro them to be connected
And if its impossible to get I think it should be more disabled for who did not get it already, not just open for them

But the game wont be completed on 100% then
Something should be done instead of disabling them

Tanoomba 7 hours ago

It is important to remember that we are not entitled to be able to obtain every achievement for any give game. Achievements are a tool at the devs' disposal to use as they see fit, and if they want some achievements to be unobtainable (either by design or as the natural result of features becoming outdated) then that's their prerogative. An interesting example is the game Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, which has one achievement intentionally designed to be unobtainable (without cheating) to reinforce the game's narrative themes.

Also, as has been mentioned, allowing people to 100% games after certain achievements become unobtainable de-values those achievements for those that did achieve them legitimately. I bought all the games in the Sega Genesis Collection and got all the achievements. If someone bought the collection after the Sonic games were de-listed and therefore can't get the Sonic-related achievements, it doesn't seem right to me that they have the same 100% I do when there are achievements I got that they never did.

Mad Scientist 7 hours ago

If people want to truly achievement hunt, they would buy the game as close to its release date as possible, as any achievement hunter knows the longer a game goes on for, the more likely something can become unobtainable like "play a match with a developer".

I also love it when Devs make a literally, always-unobtainable achievement that either is made for the purpose of making achievement hunting not a thing for their game, or otherwise marking people using software to unlock it displaying a status of being a cheater for the game.

A "No" for this sort of idea, "achievement hunters" or "completionists" are either in at the beginning to get all the achievements, or they're late to the party and know the risk of something being unachievable, something they can look up in advance if all that matters is the achievements. The purpose of buying games is to enjoy the games.

#10

Ben Lubar 7 hours ago

If something is broken in a video game, tell the developers.

There isn't some kind of "video game bug police" who go around arresting bugs from random video games and putting them in "video game bug jail".

You just need to tell the person who can fix the problem.

And if that problem is "the game isn't profitable enough to keep the servers up", there might not be any person who can fix that problem.

#11

Shreddy 7 hours ago

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:
If something is broken in a video game, tell the developers.

There isn't some kind of "video game bug police" who go around arresting bugs from random video games and putting them in "video game bug jail".

You just need to tell the person who can fix the problem.

And if that problem is "the game isn't profitable enough to keep the servers up", there might not be any person who can fix that problem.

What are you talking about? Steam address bugs all the time and the achievement system falls under Steam since it’s part of the user interface. If an achievement is unobtainable in the steam interface then it is a bug being caused by bad software and the suggestion being made would allow for this to be fixed.

#12

Mad Scientist 7 hours ago

Originally posted by Shreddy:
Originally posted by Ben Lubar:
If something is broken in a video game, tell the developers.

There isn't some kind of "video game bug police" who go around arresting bugs from random video games and putting them in "video game bug jail".

You just need to tell the person who can fix the problem.

And if that problem is "the game isn't profitable enough to keep the servers up", there might not be any person who can fix that problem.
What are you talking about? Steam address bugs all the time and the achievement system falls under Steam since it’s part of the user interface. If an achievement is unobtainable in the steam interface then it is a bug being caused by bad software and the suggestion being made would allow for this to be fixed.

If there's a "problem" with a particular games achievements, that's the Developer that can fix it. Some Devs have also made intentionally unobtainable achievements, others require playing a match with a Dev, etc. Quite often it's not a "bug" so much as someone waited too long to buy the game, or the Dev doesnt like the concept of achievement hunting, others even use an achievement to find cheaters.

Last edited by Mad Scientist; 7 hours ago

#13

Tito Shivan 7 hours ago

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:
If something is broken in a video game, tell the developers.

Which leads us to the inevitable brickwall of suggestions like this.

It eventually reach a point where it requires developer intervention. The same developer who hasn't fixed the achievement for ages will be the one who will have to remove it from the game.

Originally posted by Golden Unicorn:
they should remove the pointless achievments from steam all together, since almost anyone who is doing achivements are using sams anyway to fake it.

Like almost how every statement from you is plain wrong.

#14

Black Blade 5 hours ago

Originally posted by FilthyAnimal:
But the game wont be completed on 100% then
Something should be done instead of disabling them

Why not? When I say disable them in the way I think about it, the achivment switch color or something showing as disabled, for pepole that already got it, it will remain open and active, but for who its disabled the achivment will simply not count to the 100% is what I meant

Originally posted by Tanoomba:
It is important to remember that we are not entitled to be able to obtain every achievement for any give game. Achievements are a tool at the devs' disposal to use as they see fit, and if they want some achievements to be unobtainable (either by design or as the natural result of features becoming outdated) then that's their prerogative. An interesting example is the game Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, which has one achievement intentionally designed to be unobtainable (without cheating) to reinforce the game's narrative themes.

Also, as has been mentioned, allowing people to 100% games after certain achievements become unobtainable de-values those achievements for those that did achieve them legitimately. I bought all the games in the Sega Genesis Collection and got all the achievements. If someone bought the collection after the Sonic games were de-listed and therefore can't get the Sonic-related achievements, it doesn't seem right to me that they have the same 100% I do when there are achievements I got that they never did.

I do agree on that
So be good if the developer could be the one to mark at least the achivments as disabled, allowing to do it with the Steamworks over the developer maybe having to go into the code will make it more possible at the very least that they do it
I also agree it should not just be removed or opened but should be disabled, so pepole that got it keep it, and who ever did not get it in time can still 100% the game without it

In the edge cases of some achivments then ya there is an issue there, even that I guess could just have an option to give the developer a veto option to mark an achivment as working as it should, that could be that its impossible to get
I do think this suggestion is mostly for achivments that broke, becouse of time, or becouse the servers went down, some developers I am sure will like this ability as well, as stated before Splitgate developers I am sure will have done a disable for the achivments if that was an option, they dont remove it, as some worked hard to get them before the servers went down, and for now they decide to simply have them impossible to get

#15

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Date Posted: 27 Oct @ 5:45am

Posts: 22

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