Playing Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition on PC and I hit one of those classic “Bugthesda” moments: last time this level crashed to desktop with no warning, and today my screen randomly auto‑adjusted mid‑game and threw my aim and immersion completely off.
I did the usual ritual: check for updates → Microsoft Store updates → verify game files → repair the library. You know the drill.
But honestly, that’s not the part that’s really stuck in my head.
What’s been gnawing at me is this: in 2026, are achievements still relevant in the way platforms treat them—especially when mods disable them anyway?
A few things bother me:
Mods disable achievements (even on consoles now in some cases), so for a lot of players they’re already meaningless mechanically.
There’s no way to opt out. If I don’t want a permanent public record of what I did or didn’t do in a game, tough luck.
Even if I uninstall or refund a game, the partial achievement list just sits there on my profile forever like a half‑finished diary I never agreed to publish.
What I wish existed is something like:
a “no achievements” mode where I can play purely for the experience, and my achievement list just shows as “inaccessible/opted out” to others
or at least the ability to hide or erase achievements for specific games if I decide I don’t want that history attached to me anymore
I’m not pretending I can change the minds of big companies who still design like it’s 2005, but I am genuinely curious what different types of players think:
Achievement hunters: Do you care if others can opt out, or does that not affect you at all?
Mod users (PC and console): Since mods often disable achievements, do they still matter to you in any way?
Everyone else: Do you ever think about the permanence of your achievement history, or is it just background noise?
Is it time for platforms to give us a real opt‑out or ephemeral play option, or am I overthinking something that most people are fine with?
I like achievements. I don't compare them to anybody else, they just give me a goal and personal sense of accomplishment. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth would have been a lot less satisfying to complete if I didn't get to see 641/641 achievements on my profile.
In 99% of games I've played that disable achievements with mods, there's a way around that on PC. In the aforementioned The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, as long as you beat the first "final" boss a single time, you can use mods freely. In Fallout 4 as you've mentioned... there's a mod that re-enables achievements. So this is an irrelevant issue to me.
As far as your other question goes, I'd be more than happy to see achievements be opt-out. On Steam you can always hide your library or use SAM to get rid of them all when you're done playing, but that's obviously not ideal.