This is something that has plagued my gaming experience over the past few years that initially led me to using GoG in the first place and I feel it's a very under documented and talked about subject. I never had access to a console or the internet up until I was in my middle teen years and prior to that I used to always play on my PC with my physical disc based games, achievements just weren't a thing that I ever saw or used. That was until I got my first Xbox 360 console..

Over time of using them I came to realize that I became so addicted to the idea of getting the achievements that I would keep playing a game I loved until I was so sick of it because I put hundreds of hours into every game trying to get 100% achievements, over time it got so bad that I developed a sort of gaming perfectionism where I would outright refuse to play a game that had multiplayer achievements that I couldn't access due to low player populations, I missed out on so many great games because of that.

Eventually I switched back to PC gaming and realized I hated the idea of Steam and not being able to backup my games so I turned to GoG, I knew Galaxy had achievement support but achievements had ruined my gaming experience so much that I turned to just playing my Offline Backups from GoG instead of using the launcher and after beating a few games this way I was taken back to gaming in my youth on my old PC.

No achievements, no secret goals and no perfectionist urge, I'm free to just enjoy games without that nagging voice in my head telling me to play a certain way so I can get this achievement.

Has anyone else had any negative experiences with Achievements? Maybe I am the outlier because of my diagnosed OCD exacerbating the subject. Anywho, that's my soapbox for the day, I'd love to hear from everyone else on the topic if there are any people who felt likewise, and I'd like to say a special thanks to GoG for rekindling my love of gaming!

Indeed, offline installers can cure achievement addiction in some way. I always felt bad about achievements in Steam as they are overloaded with Multiplayer and DLC achievements. This is what I liked about achievements on PlayStation - separate tabs and you can get 100% playing the basic version.

Now I don't care about achievements that much and hunt for them only when I want to (which happens very infrequently).

I wasn't aware of that with Playstation, that is a good way to do it in my opinion, especially since if you don't buy a DLC you could be locked out of 100% completion otherwise

A well designed game will provide a meaningful sense of progression without the need for sparkling icons and tinkling sounds.

A lot of people with OCD like tendencies suffer from them more especially in games where they are often used as cheap padding ("Congrats, you've killed your 100th monster. Now kill your 1000th, 10000th, etc, monster to artificially inflate total gameplay time by 5-50hrs via achievement grind, uh, I mean enhance that social experience!"). When the only way to get 100% achievements is "buy our DLC", then it also becomes glorified in-game advertising. For other games they are there as some substitute Telemetry-Lite, ie, "here's an achievement for finishing each chapter = x number of people progressed so far in the game". Personally I've never used or liked them (or the store clients that they depend on) and even in games with in-game achievements (eg, Stardew Valley, Dragon Age Origins, etc), I just ignore them completely. Even without OCD, I definitely find snatching the gamers attention away with "Congrats on doing x meaningless task!" popups + jingles irritating / immersion breaking though.

Oh yes, I hate achievements. They've never been a problem for me personally (unless they are entertaining, I don't care), but I recall they have sometimes led to restrictions and control mechanisms in games that run opposite to the game being drm-free.

Basically, they are hogging my game with cr*p so that someone can get an artificial ego high on what is essentially a hobby.

I hate the damn things. The first thing that comes into my mind whenever I see a mindless "HEY OVER HERE! You have unlocked x achievement" popup usually accompanied by an annoying 'console / mobile phone' sound is "Am I actually playing a PC game, or am I in the trashy 'Freemium' section of the Google Play store again where something wants a 'coin' to be purchased to be 'permitted' to keep on playing". They both feel like they come from the same 'design philosophy' of being intentionally disrespectful towards maintaining player immersion. I'm just glad most of my favourites were created before the dark year of 2008 (the year Valve invented Steamworks which added them).

Edit: The worst of all are remakes / remasters that try and shoehorn 'exists for the sake of existing' new achievements into old games that never originally had them. It's like corporate graffiti on the Mona Lisa...

Glad to hear theres other people who agree with me on this one, I can see why people love achievements when it can prolong the games they enjoy but I think they are pretty detrimental and irresponsibly designed a lot of the time, the same way a lot of live service games nowadays try to cause fomo, a lot of achievements feel almost designed to make you stick playing that one game nonstop so the companies can show their investors that engagement numbers are through the roof!

Personally I never use a launcher / client so I never see them. It does remind me of a conversation with a relative of mine (a psychiatrist) over an Easter family gathering though. Another relative (a teacher) asked her opinion about mobile phone / social media addiction vs classroom attention and she replied something like : "It's the difference between giving vs taking attention. Really focusing on a task is 'giving' attention. An endless stream of popups, alerts, messages, notifications, etc, constantly interrupting are all 'taking' attention. When someone grows up bombarded by the latter, they can end up with stunted social development skills, ie, are more likely to become hyper-reactive whilst also being deficient in the "pro-active" / creative areas. You see this on social media where people only start to care about issues after they've been 'shared' (alerted) even to the point where people turn up at protest rallies without even knowing why they're protesting because they're just 'following' alerts / friends, where people start repeating the same thing 'liked' Youtube comments say in order to be 'liked' too rather than saying what they actually want to say / coming up with something themselves, etc."

^ When you think about it, achievements are really just an extension of social media alerts, and only being able to have fun playing a game after you've received an alert that 'permits' you to have fun (vs finding your own fun which improves creativity skills) has never been any healthier than 'normal' social media addictions for many people.

Good topic. With respect to those that love achievements, though I can't understand why, achievements come across as sucker-bait for individuals that think some sort of nebulous arbitrary score based on obscure or meritless in-game actions (or inactions in some cases such as stand in a corner for 2 minutes, Congrats you get 5 achievement points!) constitute bragging rights or demonstrate skill. This is especially true of the bizarre practice of paying persons to unlock achievements for you. Achievements were a new concept to me on the 360 as well, but it quickly became apparent that the overwhelming majority of them is hollow as another poster noted (Congrats, you get 50 achievement points for letting this game run idly for 3 hours!).

I suppose they could justify them if they meant anything (only award them for actual in-game accomplishments such as long win streak or completing a difficult task/stunt), but as was also noted above, they mostly exist to artificially inflate play-time thereby making it seem as though there is far more content than there is. Games don't have to provide 50 hours+ of content to be great (Arkham Asylum is among my favorite games ever and it's rather short, and yes, has some meaningless, silly 'achievements' but the gameplay is fun and it has a great story). Make your content better rather than relying on duping players to perform the same pointless action 100 times more than they ever normally would for 20 meaningless points of nothing.

Apologies if that came off as a rant, I just think the achievement concept has been rather bad for the industry from the players' perspective since it incentivizes meaningless grind and lazy planning rather than games with good core concepts that are fun to play. Happy gaming all.

Edit: Just a quick addition, excellent points made by ListyG in that achievements perpetuate the social media addiction. Persons pour far more time into them while not having a good time for no tangible reward just to get them unlocked.

Great post, and so true too, it really makes you think

Tell me about it. Achievements can be absolute nightmare for people struggling with severe OCD and for me also one of main reasons why I recently deleted my Steam account with over 500 games on it.

Yeah, used to look up guides on how to get certain achievements, or grind for achievements, or otherwise push for semi-completionism, but that was when I was younger and more ambitious and wanted to rack up my Gamerscore™. As of recent, the only time I achievement hunt is for those sweet, sweet Microsoft Rewards, and now that they just stopped making those a requirement for their weekly doodly doos, I only really ever play games for casual enjoyment instead of, say, booting up Halo and completing a level to try and earn easy achievements as a bizarre form of self-flagellation. I don't use GOG Galaxy either, so I'm not really missing any achievements there.

I like Achievements and generally never buy games if they have Achievements on other stores but not on GOG, with exceptions for games that were published on GOG before GOG offered the Achievements feature.

Many Achievements are simply not worth the time and effort and energy to bother achieving though.

For Achievements like that, I simply make no effort to obtain them.

I can see why the OP would get burned out trying to get all the Achievements for every game, since many Achievements require ludicrous investments of time and/or overcoming ludicrously unfair difficulty and/or insanely aggravating & repetitive grinding.

For me, things like that don't burn me out because I don't bother with them and I just move on to other games with more reasonable Achievement requirements. But I don't need to forsake Achievements entirely, or hate on the concept, just because there are a lot of bad Achievements out there.

In the case of the OP, however, I would recommend for him to continue not using Achievements since they were having a very negative impact on his particular life.

I liked a term you used: perfectionism
Perfectionism is never easy & it never promises a sweet happy journey :)

I wouldnt call your case a negative experience,
after all, it seems you had control over it
to the point you quit by your own will

I'd focus instead on the biggest cost of it:
All the time required to achieve those 100% completions

Sure, there are many other factors like
achievements incorrectly implemented, insane difficulty,
extreme grinding, low players, etc
But at the end of the day, if one is playing for it
is in the pursuit of some sort of personal pleasure

Im sure if our time on this earth would be unlimited,
I wouldnt complain at all to aim to 100% completions
(True, only to the vgames I like, not them all without any filter)

I guess what Im trying to say is achievements
are not complete demons/angels (a black or white situation)
Just another option available. Use it wisely

Sometimes I truly obsess to get the 100%
(Sleepless nights repeating/perfecting my gameplay,
lots of research, cursing as a pirate all my frustration... etc)

Surprisingly, other times, I just disdain them:
They clearly smell like boring/lame-excuses/endless-WORK a mile away

Why? A whole separate topic on its own
But enough introspection for now :)

Im glad you feel you are in control, thats what matters
Please dont grant that credit to this store, its fully yours
Have fun playing!