Opinions on "Achievement Farming" games.

[Malscuttle]

Hello.

For a while now, I have seen a rising trend of games appearing on Steam with 5000+ achievements in them, which all can be earned in less than an hour. These games seem to work since they use letters and meme-related imagery in their achievements, for use in achievement showcases. They also tend to have very cheap trading cards.

My opinion on this is that they are barely "games" at all, and instead exist only to cash in on people wanting to boost their achievement count. It severely ruins the value of having a high amount of achievements on an account (If they even had any value to begin with, considering how easy it is to cheat them.)

Now I want to hear the opinions of the achievement community, are you okay with this?
Should these games be banned on achievement tracking websites?
Should Valve remove this kind of game from Steam?
Any solutions?

[ᏦᏂᎯᏒᏂᎯ乙]

They could ban them on achievement trackers sides in my opinion. There is no sense to have them there i suppose.

[Ryuu]

Astats already cuts them down to 10 point regardless of anything.

[Cassynder]

I don't think they should be banned. People need to be free to play what they want. This is PC gaming after all. Doesn't mean I endorse it and I hate this trend with a passion. It's completely cheapened achievement hunting for me as everything has been devalued by the vast number of achievements that can be earned in hours for little to no effort. I agree with you there.

There's many different sides to achievement hunting though and you can happily ignore them without playing any of them and still have a good time. I've always said hunting is a personal thing and everyone is looking to take different things out of it. Do what works for you and ignore the things that don't.

One thing is for certain though. These "games" are here to stay as people will keep buying them. Like it or not. Valve would need to do more to restrict this and they've proven many times they won't.

[Richtoon]

Some games already removed off Steam store like Raccoon Hero and Berry Match Crush because both of them have like 8 same games with different titles.

[lilcoffeebean]

Don't really see a reason to outright ban them on trackers. Trackers need to adjust to reflect the current environment rather then pretend it's not changing, which to some extent Astats has tried to do. As far as Steam banning them, they've expressed rather clearly on numerous occassions now, they have no desire to curate the store.

I also don't really see any issue with the game's themselves existing. If someone wants to play x game to get the icons or pad their achievement count numbers, then more power to them. I also don't agree with the sentiment it ruins anything from a hunting standpoint. Total achievement counts were never that impressive to me on Steam, because they tell you basically nothing especially in an environment where there are far more trivial achievements (even before spam) then other achievements. It's just a metric I've never really understood why there is so much emphasis on.

[Mercury]

Steam removed a bunch of achievement spam games recently. I don't like it, as to even have a chance at competing for cheevo hunting, you have to buy a bunch of crap achievement spam games. A bit disappointing, and probably draws some people away from the hobby.

[lilcoffeebean]

Originally posted by Mercury:

Steam removed a bunch of achievement spam games recently. I don't like it, as to even have a chance at competing for cheevo hunting, you have to buy a bunch of crap achievement spam games. A bit disappointing, and probably draws some people away from the hobby.

Competing where exactly? If you're just looking at raw numbers, then yes, you can't compete with someone who plays spam games. That would still exist without spam games however, as there isn't a requirement for every game to have x achievements, so pure quantity has never (nor likely will ever) be balanced..

This is part of the reason trackers exist with independent leaderboards and on a site like Astats, what's commonly referred to as spam games, isn't going to propel you up the leaderboards unless you're in the very bottom portion of the rankings, at which point any kind of achievements would do the same.

[Meszes]

These are just meaningless numbers. How can they ruin anything?

[ToxicDog]

Run Away -> 6664 achievements, how to get them? Keep open the game