He's worried about legit achievs and simply came up with an idea.
I disagree with his solution, but there could be a better compromise (if companies cared):
for example, offline achievs could be marked differently or kept private, whilst only online\valid ones would be public.

"Achievements" are nothing more than a game industry marketing device that allows them to say "hey, look at all this VALUE we've added to your games!!! ".

Of course we don't. But it allows them to keep releasing games that are a broken mess on day one, or that nag you to buy "extras" that used to be included in the base game.

What.. are you sure you aren't confusing achievs with DLCs?
Achievements have nothing to do with unfinished releases or sold extras..

He's saying some achievements are tied to paid DLC, and when they add the DLC, they add the achievements so your 100% goes down, or you can't get 100% without buying the DLC. Some are used to strong arm completionists into buying content they otherwise may not be interested in.

They have nothing to do with anything that is substantive.

No, I'm basically saying what you were saying. They're insubstantial fluff.

I think the problem is the "do not allow offline achievements" or flagging them differently the first poster suggested doesn't even solve the cheating problem as it falsely believe that using SAM offline is the only way of unfairly unlocking achievements by blocking primitive detection methods like Steam / Galaxy watching for achievements that are unlocked without the game even running. In reality, I can think of several other ways of cheating achievements by manipulating in-game mechanics without ever using SAM all whilst running them "online" via Galaxy / Steam. Eg:-

- A trainer / Cheat Engine that increases your movement speed, ammo, health, gifts items, slows down time, etc that makes it 10x easier to unlock from within the game without tampering the achievement directly from outside of it.

- Start a game online, save, quit, use a save game editor, then continue online. Or using someone else's save game files. If you blocked the latter, then you'd also be blocking the ability to locally back up and restore your own real saves for future reinstalls.

- For some engines like Unreal, simply using the engine-level hidden developer cheats. Eg, for Bioshock 1-2, edit the User.ini config file, find the keybindings and add the lines NumPad1=God, NumPad2=ghost, NumPad3=StopSecurityAlarm, Numpad4=GiveItem 1000 ShockGame.ADAM, etc, to enable in-game God Mode, no clipping, free items, instant alarm disable, etc. Other engines have similar in-game "hidden" console cheats / "developer mode" that really aren't that hard to find.

- Mods. Many games don't specifically exclude them for achievement related stuff.

- Other stuff. Eg, if a horror game achievement is hard to get because the area is too dark, use your AMD / nVidia GPU driver or SweetFX to simply increase the gamma.

Any achievement segregation / annulment based on a very naive "playing offline = possibly cheating, playing online = guaranteed not cheating" just gives a massively false sense of security whilst the cheaters are openly laughing at those who think "SAM" is only way of cheating achievements. The only way around this stuff (and much more) is to require all games (inc single player) to be played only online and include Server Side Cheat Detection (such as FairFight as used in PUBG, Fortnite, etc) that constantly monitors every metric in the game from remote servers. But then what the OP ends up arguing for (without realising it) is demanding GOG introduce DRM into GOG's DRM-Free games...

I would love to see games with "achievements" that poke fun at the people that care about them. Or games that give you 3 achievements per minute. :o

Oh, I guess there's nothing to do then.. I certainly don't want DRM here +_+

This already exists in some crap games, but it's like achievement spamming every second.

Deadpool comes to mind.

*ping*
"Achievement unlocked: The first one's free"
...
*ping*
"Achievement unlocked: The second one's also free"

3 achievements per second. with each achievement unlocked, game create two new ones. :D

never ending achievements paradise. <3

I love achievements. But I don't care how others enjoy unlocking them, via cheats or hard-work, that's for them to decide.

For me, it's not a competition with others, or to prove something to someone, but rather a milestone of sort in a game. When I come back to a game, I check the achievements to see what I did and where I am in the game. And this helps me a bit getting back into the game.

And how about achievements for getting achievements? lol

I'd love to see a game that is basically a sophisticated IQ/personality test that creates a profile which is used to passive-aggressively torment you into submission. lol

It's all about e-peens.
Imagine you're a well hung stud.
You can easily prove that by showing off that bulge in your pants.
But one day you notice something strange...in this city of yours, where you, so far, were one of just a handful with a big bulge in their pants, there suddenly run around dozens, if not hundreds of other studs with huge bulges.
That's doing no good for your self-esteem.
And then, a friend lets you in on the secret: all these bulging pants? These guys shoved a pair of socks into their amusement department. Truth is: they aren't really so well hung like you.
Now, rational thinking, you would say "phew!", wipe the sweat from your brow, and live your life on, as the well hung stud you actually are.
After all: you can provide what your bulging pants promise...all these others can't.
But in not so rational thinking, you find yourself wondering "what if the secret of "the pairs of socks" gets out to the public?"
Won't that lead to people who admired your bulge just yesterday, to question the legitimacy of your bulge tomorrow?
So, what are you gonna do about it?
Will you be a man, simply live on, and whenever the question after legitimacy arises, let your pants down to prove it?
Or...will you try to ban socks?

;)

Policing other people's gaming achievements.

I thought I had seen petty before. I was wrong.