Is Steam Achievement Manager (SAM) safe, and does it work?

[Defenestration]

I just recently received a bugged achievement that I did not deserve, and would like to remove it from my achievements list.

Specifically I would like to use it on a non valve/non vac game (Dead by Daylight).

[Cheezus Crisp]

Safe to use? Not really. Depends on the game. SAM isn't allowed for DBD. Does it work? Yes. But removing an achievement using SAM doesn't remove it from Valve's history.

[Defenestration]

Originally posted by Cheezus Crisp:

Safe to use? Not really. Depends on the game. SAM isn't allowed for DBD. Does it work? Yes. But removing an achievement using SAM doesn't remove it from Valve's history.

Is it not allowed because it's a bannable offense or is it not allowed because it cannot be possible to use it on Dead by Daylight?

Correct me if necessary, but I assume an achievement stays on Valve's history but it's removed from your profile unless you re-earn it.

[TheCount]

If a DBD Moderator sees your Dead By Daylight achievements, you will get banned from the game. Dont use it for DBD. If you got a problem with an achievement got to the official site and write to the support. They will evtl ask you for a save game.

[J4MESOX4D]

SAM is largely safe but it can break your achievement showcase percentages. Also some developers will ban for it and have tailored their anti-cheat systems to automatically detect such behaviour. DBD and Payday 2 are just a couple that do this but DBD devs actually authorise red Game Bans to appear on the users profile.

[GrumpySeal78]

Hey there! I hope you can help me out here...
Recently I bought two games just to get this huge amount of easy achievements of these games (each appr. 2000 achievements), both games of the same developer.
Now I think: "How stupid you are.... to buy two games, that give you easily so many achievements, naaaah, that's uncool!" So I'd like to get rid of the achievements of these games, mainly for my overall achievement percentage.
Now I installed SAM and reset both games. In my steam stats both games appear now with "0 out of xxx achievements". Fine. But obviously only one of these two games was recalculated in my overall stats. Before SAM I had like 5000 achievements, now I have 3000. But I'd like to see 1000. Does anyone have an idea, why the overall stats only reset one of these two games?
Do games have to be installed when using SAM?
Thanks for helping me out here!

[Scarecrow]

SAM is highly frowned upon with legit achievement hunters like myself. if you even think about using it, you shouldnt some achievements unlocked randomly due to bugs it is apart of gaming, contact the developer

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Scarecrow:

SAM is highly frowned upon with legit achievement hunters like myself. if you even think about using it, you shouldnt some achievements unlocked randomly due to bugs it is apart of gaming, contact the developer

I'm somebody that doesn't cheat to unlock achievements, but I couldn't give a damn if others do. Why would I care, why does it matter to me what other people do? The only thing that matters is what I am doing, if others want to cheat to unlock them, then I don't see how it's any of our business.

The only type of cheating I am against is cheating on online games against other people, because it affects other players directly.

If I wasn't such a chicken, I would use SAM to unlock unobtainable achievements. I'm always afraid that in the future, Valve will suddenly change their stance on this and ban players for using it.

[hawajska]

Nivea

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by davidb11:

No one bans for using SAM any more.
Can people stop spreading that lie!
Payday 2 stopped doing it a long time ago.

No other game will magically be able to tell you had a cheated achievement through freakign SAM and then ban you for it. UNLESS it is a broken achievement.

Payday 2 couldn't even do it because of all the legal problems it could cause.
SAme with the dead by Daylight team.
THey cannot block access to the game you bought because of that.
THere is no law that would allow them

This is a thread necro'd from January. EAC was tailored to detect achievement cheating for DbD and developers can put any conditions they wish into the licence in regards to 3rd party software usage. There is no legal issues whatsoever and developers took this avenue because they didn't want users profiting or receiving in-game items that weren't earned legitimately. Now those games don't have such things tied, they are not as strict about it.

[Judgmental Amaterasu]

Originally posted by davidb11:

No one bans for using SAM any more.
Can people stop spreading that lie!
Payday 2 stopped doing it a long time ago.

No other game will magically be able to tell you had a cheated achievement through freakign SAM and then ban you for it. UNLESS it is a broken achievement.

Payday 2 couldn't even do it because of all the legal problems it could cause.
SAme with the dead by Daylight team.
THey cannot block access to the game you bought because of that.
THere is no law that would allow them
It would be the same as theft. I don't know why anyone would claim otherwise.


Sigh.
Also, it is literally impossible to tell that any achievement by itself has been unlocked by SAM.
Unless it is a bugged achievement that is not possible to get otherwise.
For obvious reasons.

However, if it is not one of those types of achievements, no one on the planet can tell that you unlocked it via SAM.

Stop spreading lies and misinformation people!

Do I just have to constantly summon Crunchyfrog into every one of these discussions?
Sigh.

He knows his stuff at least.
There is so much misinformation on SAM out there it's not even funny.

Steam doesn't even care as much as people claim.
THey have more important things to worry about.

Can people please look up all the information regarding SAM and understand how silly it is to claim it can affect any legit achievement hunter when again, it is physically impossible to tell if an achievement has been unlocked by freaking SAM.
Period, end of DEBATE.

Again, unless it's a bugged achievement no one can unlock normally.
I don't think I have to constantly repeat that part.

This is a necro'd thread. You're effectively arguing at out of date information posted in an abandoned thread because it was out of date XD

[Garou]

There are some people who have a million of obviously fake achievements and thousands of "friends" and comments. No one cares and no one bans those.
You're in trouble only if in-game prizes are tied to achievements.

What really is annoying is that SAM is so widespread that any bug or achievements at the same time are assumed to be unlocked with SAM. But some "hentai puzzle" and other poorly coded games only give you achievements when you close the game (obviously they will show up as unlocked at the same time) even though you earned them legit. Looks suspicious, so you have to periodically close the game after every level to prevent it.

But my biggest annoyance is CS:GO. Played 1000+ hours between 2012 and 2014, unlocked a ton of achievements. One day went to check the page and every single one is unlocked at the same date and time sometime in 2015. Contacted support, got a standard response that they can't do anything about it. Funny thing is there are many people who had a similar issue, when I went to the various forums.

CS:GO has no built in achievement reset, so even If I wanted to wipe them, I'd have to use dreaded SAM and then CS:GO would just sync all the achievements back because my in-game stats still exist. To this day I don't know what caused it (could be sync bug, could be community server trolling, compromised account very unlikely because they'd unlock all and not 90% of achievements which is my true % for this game, etc..) and there's literally no way to fix it. Some people will say "just tell Valve to code achievement reset". Do you really think they will listen? Rhetorical question.

Bottom line, use SAM if you don't care about achievement communities, developers banning you and potentially affecting other people who played buggy or lazily coded games. Achievement system is very flawed and it seems we won't be getting anything better anytime soon.

edit: here's just one example https://steamcommunity.com/app/730/discussions/0/1741106440029599902/

[cinedine]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Stop spreading lies and misinformation people!

Oh yes, please do.

Originally posted by davidb11:

Payday 2 couldn't even do it because of all the legal problems it could cause.
SAme with the dead by Daylight team.
THey cannot block access to the game you bought because of that.
THere is no law that would allow them
It would be the same as theft. I don't know why anyone would claim otherwise.

It's NOT THE SAME as theft.
It's a termination of a license. And there is no law forbidding that. It happens all the time with other games.
It's perfectly legal. You break the terms of contract, the contract is declared nil. In case of software licensing it means you lose the right to use that software.
As a matter of fact any license can be revoked for any reason following a reasonable time of notice.

Both companies stopped with it because it got increasingly diffcult to identify cheaters without having false positives. I even linked you to Overkill's statement on that before.

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Alright. I did not know the thread was necroed. That's my bad.

I don't see how it can ever be legal to literally take away playing the game from the person who buys it.
That's the part I don't understand.

You literallly can never take back someone's playing of a game after they buy it.
No contract is legally enforcable in a court of law.
That has never been a case

So you're saying that all VAC bans and other licence violations are illegal and Valve along with every other developer with an anti-cheat should be taken to court for enforcing their own licencing guidelines on consumers who have agreed to their conditions?

It is not a violation of law to prevent someone from playing on protected servers if they have violated the licence. The end user still owns the game regardless.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Alright. I did not know the thread was necroed. That's my bad.

I don't see how it can ever be legal to literally take away playing the game from the person who buys it.
That's the part I don't understand.

You literallly can never take back someone's playing of a game after they buy it.
No contract is legally enforcable in a court of law.
That has never been a case.

I don't get why you can't accept you could be wrong about something, especially when there is no legal president allowing a contract law to be held up in court.

I trust Crunchyfrog and his literal years of experience with contract law more than random people with no experience in that field and who do not like him.

If crunchyfrog tells me to stop freaking out and says you're right, I'll believe it.

Until something proves that EULA are legally binding, I can't take that as a reason.

I'm not trying to be annoying. I just don't get why the person with actual experience in the law, is incorrect about something literally inside his area of expertize.
THat is like saying I shouldn't trust a nuclear physicist about nuclear power and I should trust random other people instead.

What?!

The whole point of having acontract is for an agreement to be legally enforceable.

And yes EULAs are legally binding. Again: that's the whole point of them. Ther eare circumstances under which they can be voided either in full or only certain clauses. For the later you have the Salvatorian clause. And it obviously depends on the legislation of each country. Same with any contract.
One example are shrink-wrap licenses where you agree to the terms by opening a box without even seeing these terms beforehand. In the US there have been cases validating them as well as invalidating them.

Also game bans do not render the product useless. They just prevent you from using it in a certain way. You could still play on private servers, access all the assets and have a wank over having it installed.

[TTV WholfOfficial⚡]

From my pov, using SAM is only dangerous on VAC-protected games like CS:GO but 1000's of people claimed/got all the achievements while they only have a few hours of play-time without getting banned. Not quite sure how SAM is right now as i'm not using it anymore as i'm to afraid to get game-banned or whatever.