I felt this way at first but I just learned to not try to care. It’s hard because I agree when I worked hard to get some rare achievements that I feel should have a lower percentage I always have a thought in the back of my head that hackers have probably bumped this up some. The same is for consoles as well just not as much. You won’t really find an even playing field because everyone has different views of achievement hunting. Some like using mods or hacks to enhance their experience as long as they get all achievements. I say just focus on your own goals and achievements and surround yourself with like minded people who hype you up.

Originally posted by Nickscamping:

I say just focus on your own goals and achievements and surround yourself with like minded people who hype you up.

^ Agreed. While it is frustrating, I don't think it is worth the time or energy to worry over, when our time is finite, and it is something we do not have control over. Even if Valve "did something", cheating will never go away, and people will always find workarounds to manipulate the system.

Play games, beat them, complete them... but most of all, enjoy them.

It's not cheating, steam doesn't do anything because achievements are not a value, we don't buy achievements, achievements are not mandatory, they are added by the devs not by steam.

If you do something for others, you're dependent on others.
If you're not able to play for yourself but just for a %, it's because you think that the % reaches interests other people than you, that's sad.
Live for yourself, not for others.

Try stoicism, philosophy is always a good solution to mental and everyday problems.

What's more, sometimes lowering the % on certain achievements is a good idea.
The main reason many devs add achievements is to force people to play their game longer.

Some time ago, I played a game that had very complicated achievements, and in 100 hours of play I hadn't even done 10% of the countdown required to get the achievement.
This studio forces people like you to play their game for 1000 hours, because they've managed to make you a slave to their business.

Sam picker is sometimes a way of fighting against certain studios that behave worse than real cheaters.

I'm not telling you to use software against devs like the one above, just don't ruin your fun.
But don't blame the people who don't care about success and who sometimes use software to get it, because they too attach importance to something that's only of value to them.
They're just like you, trapped in the same trap you are.

You can’t punish something that’s virtually impossible to detect. While I understand that some might lose motivation when shortcuts like SAM allow you to unlock an incredibly difficult trophy in mere minutes, that misses the point entirely. Earning achievements and striving for perfection in a game should be about personal satisfaction and happiness – nothing more, nothing less.

If someone uses programs to brag or decorate their profile in this way, it’s pure hypocrisy. But that’s just how people are, and you can’t change them. There are groups like this one where, at least personally, I strongly believe that most people here play fair, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

Achievements unlocking instantly isn't always cheating btw. There are several examples:

- Games with cross-progression/save can instantly give you all achievements if you completed them on another platform or client. Such games from my personal experience include Stardew Valley and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and Half Life 2. I've also heard all of the Ubisoft games that have recently implemented achievements on Steam do so as well.

- For some games, completing achievements while playing games offline will only give you the achievements once you become online again. This means all of the achievements that you've completed during an offline session will have the same time-stamp of completion that correlates to the time you become online again.

My suggestion is like others: focus on your own personal achievements and goals. I don't really worry about what other people do with their achievements, though it's nice to compare achievements with your friends sometimes.

Why should someone else cheating to earn achievements affect your enjoyment of the game? If you think they have cheated to get a cheevo, just block them and move on. That way you won't see their achievements again.

i agree with Nickscamping and SpeedieMarie. Surround yourself with like-minded people, instead. Those who are willing to cheer you on and encourage you, and maybe even help you with those frustrating and annoying multiplayer ones. Don't let someone else's negative approach drag you down.

Well.. first of all and this is very important OP..
You need to be doing this for yourself.. not for others, not for competition.
If you're not hunting achievements for yourself then there really is no point in doing it..

People cheat achievements on the consoles as well, it's just not as common as it is on Steam, nor in the same way.
Console hunting has a lot of problems with it as well, I mean just look at the top PSN profiles.. the amount of shovelware people buy several copies of to bloat their lists is insane.. worse than Steam in many ways, platinum competition is non existent there as well unless you're willing to resort to the same behaviour and subject yourself to multiple copies of complete garbage games.

But yes I agree this is something Steam should punish, maybe not in a way like banning people or anything but I wouldn't be opposed to Steam slapping a title or something on Steam Profiles that have been linked to things like Manager software.. like they do with VAC bans, a mark of shame if you will.

Something like False achiever or something, and the only way to remove it would be to delete cheated achievements obtained by SAM.
But I doubt this would ever happen.. Steam just doesn't give achievements much attention tbh, and something like this would probably require a lot of work to implement, specially since the achievement system on Steam is extremely basic.

People who cheat achievements like that are for the most part.. extremely obvious.
Public Profiles can easily be checked and cheaters easily spotted.. I know there are many even in this group who have used SAM or something like it.
Though I don't say anything or call them out for it..
I do however find it funny, and little sad when they talk about the games they didn't actually beat.. it's just silly to brag about something you didn't do that people can easily see that you cheated.
And since hunting achievements is ultimately something you should be doing for yourself then the only person who's really loosing here is the cheater themselves.

And if you hide your profile.. well that's all well and good but what's ultimately the point about claiming you beat anything to others?
Why bother when you know nobody can see your achievements anyway, honour system means nothing in this hobby, if you want others to know what you've done then you gotta let them see for themselves, only way they'll genuinely believe you're legit and respect your completions.

End of the day there are plenty of legit hunters here as well, so focus on them if you're interested in the community side of achievement hunting.
Ignore the cheaters, laugh at them when you see them if you like.. just you know, in the real world.
But ultimately remember that you hunt achievements because you enjoy it, and that's what's really important.

Focus on your energy with people who legit care about achievements, there are groups to be part of and affiliated with so at the end of the day if it don't harm you then no reason to unnecessary worry about it, even if some of my friends had used SAM I just don't care it's their choice to decide how they do things.

Originally posted by Division:

Focus on your energy with people who legit care about achievements, there are groups to be part of and affiliated with so at the end of the day if it don't harm you then no reason to unnecessary worry about it, even if some of my friends had used SAM I just don't care it's their choice to decide how they do things.

Some can argue that there is some impact.. with the completion %'s being inaccurate because of cheaters but that is ultimately quite minimal considering how many low % games there are out there.
It can be annoying though, like leaderboards in games always being full of blatant cheaters..

But yeah I got friends too that have used SAM, I don't really care that they did but it does make me question why sometimes.
If you care about achievements then why use something like SAM?
And if you don't care about achievement.. then why use something like SAM?

That does give the ponders sometimes tbh.

Look at it from other perspective. Have you ever had a situation where you did all of the criteria and achievement still did not pop? Because I had few of these. One example I can think of is NFS 2015, EA had some launcher problems and while I was unaware of this I completed story mode to the fullest, but no achievements popped. While EA fixed the issue in next week, achievements still did not unlock. So I went and just used SAM picker on everything that was supposed to be unlocked, instead of restarting the game from the very beggining :)

Well that is a special case scenario, bugs will be bugs after all or in your case EA being EA lol
I've had a few buggy achievements as well but most of the time backup saves can be the solution for that.
Not always an option though unfortunately.

But I was talking more about people who just cheat tons of games and don't even bother putting in the work to unlock them naturally.
At most these people play games they like, complete them or play until they've had enough and then just SAM all the achievements they didn't get while playing.

Or worse, they just SAM all achievements in games they've barely played if not played at all.

Only reason I can think of for doing that would be they don't like the popups or something.
But that seems a pretty extreme measure to go to, not to mention risky logging into Steam via a 3rd party that for all you know could hijack your steam info.
Not 100% sure either but I think you can turn the notifications off anyway.