WE don't want you, uncle SAM

SAM and related tools are definitely not going anywhere, unless science can figure out a way to change our brains.

The father of one of my friends collects newspapers. Not to read, just to have them. Most of them are (no joke) lining the floor of his house. (It's legitimately hard to walk in the house without walking on newspapers). But he continues to collect them. Why? Because the human brain has all sorts of interesting quirks.

And those same quirks lead people to NEED to get achievements in Steam games.

For me, it's confusing. Why would I want a digital record that says I killed 1,000 mudcrabs or collected every gemstone or something... if I didn't actually do those things?

It's like having someone give me a certificate that says THIS CERTIFIES THAT CANIS39 IS A BILLIONAIRE. Uh, okay, but my bank account says otherwise. So what good is the certificate? I guess it's pretty to look at.

Achievements are almost purely cosmetic. HOWEVER, they add allow more wiggle room in a game you may have completed already.

By adding different sets of challenges and milestones, you can get a bit more mileage out of your game.

Personally, I think it's a silly idea to use it SAM just for achievement unlocks, but used properly for bugged earnings, there's nothing wrong with that in my eyes. If it makes a person feel better to be surrounded by a bunch of fake accomplishments, by all means. Who am I to tell you how to be happy and/or live your life?

But why not? Personally I don't care about achievements, but I totally get it when people use SAM for acquiring bugged achievements; it's a pretty useful tool for such cases. Just an example: I'm not sure about the reason, but once in several months this or that game just stops counting achievements for me (it's not about cheats or such, last time it happened it was Unforseen Incidents, a point-and-click adventure). If I wanted my profile to show that I've actually finished these games, I'd have to use SAM.

cards or something i can sell, no achievements

I currently use it for cards, only because my IdleMaster refuses to work since about a month ago. Not interested in cheating achievements.

used sam to card farm back when it was the only way to card farm all your games at once

Had no idea this thing existed. Rather surprised that some people want to cheat at achievements. I don't have a problem with cheating in single-player games in general, but cheating at achievements? Why? Just to satisfy some completionist, OCD impulse? If an achievement is too hard / labor intensive / not worth getting, then why not just ignore it and move on with your life?

The chance that I would use a tool like this is very slim.
There a other things that bugs me more than broken achievements.
Like the "playtime" which is sometimes very bogus, I have a lot of games I played 0.0 min (actually played offline) and even the online times played are not always correct.
So what are the achievements good for if I have "officially" never played the game?

i used sam and i will use it again if i have to cause a lot of games have bugged achievements and i missed a lot of them cause of my instable internet , sometimes my internet is gone and i miss the achievements and i have to redo the whole level or a game for it

I used SAM for show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQPGfvOATXc

why bother with SAM, when each of 20+ Trivia Vault game unlocks 5K (5000)! achievement after first launch

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/4070/Complete/

I launched a few of them when they had 1 achievement each. Now I'm afraid to do so: it will inflate my score and destroy the value of other earned achievements

The entire system gone crazy

i used sam and i will use it again if i have to cause a lot of games have bugged achievements and i missed a lot of them cause of my instable internet , sometimes my internet is gone and i miss the achievements

From now on I decided to delete SAM and never use it again, neither on broken achievements or crappy achievements. If they are broken that should be reflected in the community and the owned stats and the developers are to blame...

I find that to be a compelling reason. I've never used SAM, but I have been tempted to do so as my OCD clamors for 100% completion. Now, I have another argument to use in abstaining from it.

SAM is my tool to LOCK achievements of those spam-games if I happen to have actually played one.
Nothing in Steam itself allows me to delete that onslaught :/

I use SAM to lock any MP achievements I get, so I am achieving again and again. Even better if other people see it.

Only used it once. I originally got the - Tisn't The Season - Play Costume Quest on Christmas achievement by changing the system clock.Decided I wanted it normally so locked it again with SAM then made sure I launched the game on Christmas Day.

Only ever considered it to get rid of the 25K crap achievements that have been added to my library after I naively opened those damn trivia games a friend got me, not knowing they came with auto-achievements-spam (5K each)
I do not want achievements I haven't earned so I don't see the point of faking them with SAM

Some years before the big steam sales had events involving achievements in games so people actually played them at least for a bit until they got the achievement.

Software like this effectively destroyed this and made the sales boring.