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Steam Achievement Manager 'SamRewritten' has a new release

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Need to tweak your Steam Achievements? Perhaps a game doesn't correctly unlock them or you want to start fresh again on a game - SamRewritten can help you do that. It's an open source Steam Achievements Manager for Linux and there's a new release out recently.

New features from release 202005 (Version 2.0):

  • Implement stats
  • Implement showing protected achievements and stats
  • Implement CLI support to match the GUI
  • Use gtkmm rather than plain gtk
  • Implement timed achievement modifications (start a game -> input achievement modifications -> click the menu -> Start Timed Modifications)
  • Implement ability to show only locked/unlocked achievements.
  • Implement ability to open games in a new SamRewritten window

If you do intend to use it, the usual applies with external tools that hook in with Steam, it's all done so at your own risk. I've never heard of anyone having an issue though, and since you can unlock achievements so easily it would seem pretty odd if Valve ever actually intervened.

Find SamRewritten on GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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19 comments
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ageres May 25, 2020
Ugh, cheating software...
Liam Dawe May 25, 2020
Quoting: ageresUgh, cheating software...
That seems like quite a small-minded thing to say about it. Changing your own personal achievements affects no one else.
a0kami May 25, 2020
Quoting: ageresUgh, cheating software...

To be honest, I'm really debating this internally.

My user case is the last Dying Light achievement: "Be the last standing at the end of Bozak trial".
Bozak's trial is a pain in itself but for this achievement you also need co-op partners which can be even worse as even if you do your best, if someone is lost, dies or anything, it's a collective fail.
Anyway it turns out I've done that at least 4 times now, with lovely people who played way too many hours but I can not steal more solid ours from them for them to help me get a bugged achievement.
There are whacky "faith" strategies all over the net to "increase your chances" to get the achievement even though each time your fulfilling the actual condition. Those strategies doesn't work obviously, as a game developer I suspect a bug in the netcode not so obvious or easy to fix but it ain't nothing to do with such things as "crouch 4 times", "turn around", "sing a song", and crappy BS.

I've pretty much done everything in this game, met nice and awkward people, but now it actually is holding a few dozens GB on my SSD and yet I'm here debating if I deserve this achievement or not.

I have a few other examples:
- Dead Rising 2 TIR netcode crashes the game (I manage to unlock the achievements following a very specific procedure which is a pain but still).
- Red Faction: Guerilla, last event up north was never available so you were missing one mission out of your 60h game save. Yes it was on Xbox360 but I haven't gone through the remaster for this very reason.
- Borderlands 2: all arch symbols on slot machine. I spent a few hundred hours on the game, this achievement is totally random and you have a 0.02% chance to get it (provided you have money to spend in the machine) which is roughly one over 5000 tries.
- Jet Set Radio: use all graffitis in missions. I have the achievements for all soul spirits, meaning I unlocked all graffitis, I just had to use them but since then, I lost my save as this game is known to corrupt saves from update to update.


While I will never use it to unlock achievements which I didn't meet the condition.
Currently I think I still won't use it, but I might consider from now on that if I deem I earned an achievement and it is bugged, I will manually unlock it.
Philadelphus May 25, 2020
Ah, time to update! I first heard about SAM from the previous post on it here some months ago and checked it out. I've used it to unlock a few achievements which I've definitely fulfilled but were bugged and didn't fire, such as the achievement for playing a game on an archipelago map in Civilization V, which is broken. It's really nice to be able to unlock those few achievements which have been taunting with their unattainability.
Feist May 25, 2020
I have to agree that this thing feels like a pure "cheating app", even if in most cases you'd just be cheating yourself out of the chanse of earning the achievments honestly.

Even using it to unlock achievments that simply failed to unlock due to a glitch...would still kind of feel like cheating to me.

Like competing in an athletics competition where you win the highjump, only for the whole competition to be canceled due to a fire or something, no medals for anyone. So when you get home you put it an order to the "trophy store" to have them engrave a medal for you, that you feel you did earn, even though technicaly the medal will always be a "fake" not a real one.

Well...that's just how I feel anyway, any kind of cheating has always been a "pet peeve" of mine. But to each their own.


Last edited by Feist on 25 May 2020 at 1:53 pm UTC
Philadelphus May 25, 2020
From my point of view, I got the achievement—it's not my fault the game's bugged and doesn't recognize it. And while in a perfect world I would absolutely report these to developers, realistically some of these are never getting fixed. (Civ V, for instance, will never have its Linux port updated, and incidentally has a few such bugged achievements.) I only use it in cases where I absolutely, positively, and unambiguously met the requirements for getting an achievement, where it's 100% certain that it must be bugged (where people have sometimes even checked the code and seen that it's bugged). It definitely doesn't feel as good as seeing it pop up in-game, but at least I can finally rest easy knowing that I've got an accurate achievement completion percentage.

On another, perhaps more positive note, the new ability to see stats is going to be super handy for those achievements which need them but are bugged and don't show them. Now I can finally see exactly how many more tiles of forest I need to cut down in Civ V for that Paul Bunyan achievement. (Yes, I know there's already a way to do that for Civ V, that's just an example. I know there are other games out there which don't show stats properly.)


Last edited by Philadelphus on 25 May 2020 at 2:11 pm UTC
Feist May 25, 2020
Quoting: PhiladelphusFrom my point of view, I got the achievement—it's not my fault the game's bugged and doesn't recognize it. And while in a perfect world I would absolutely report these to developers, realistically some of these are never getting fixed. (Civ V, for instance, will never have its Linux port updated, and incidentally has a few such bugged achievements.) I only use it in cases where I absolutely, positively, and unambiguously met the requirements for getting an achievement, where it's 100% certain that it must be bugged (where people have sometimes even checked the code and seen that it's bugged). It definitely doesn't feel as good as seeing it pop up in-game, but at least I can finally rest easy knowing that I've got an accurate achievement completion percentage.

Yeah, I can agree that is a fair way to use it. Personally, it's not that I think using it in such a way is wrong at all, it's more of an "uneasy gutfeeling" kind of thing. :S:
Liam Dawe May 25, 2020
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: ageresUgh, cheating software...
That seems like quite a small-minded thing to say about it. Changing your own personal achievements affects no one else.
While it's not particularly harmful and game-breaking for anyone else, it still skews global achievement statistics which are useful for real achievement hunters.
And IMO buggy achievements are not an excuse for such tools - bugs should be reported to developers, not workarounded by essentially "cheating" tool which breaks stats for everyone. Especially when it's not a really game-breaking bug.
If global stats can be messed up so easily, then it's not exactly a very good system is it. I still remember the days where games came with cheats out of the box, often in the manual and it was a very normal and accepted thing. Now people are far too quick to judge.
bradleypariah May 25, 2020
I understand that some people find value in trophies/achievements. I personally find zero. I actually dislike them a little.

I don't need a picture of an icon that is stored online after I press the right button enough times to tell me I achieved something. The only thing I want to achieve is having fun. I know when that's happening, without Steam or the game devs telling me. When an achievement pops up in the bottom-right corner of my screen, I sigh with a little contempt. I don't want to think about me playing the game, I want to be immersed in the game world. Achievements are distracting.

I have never once talked to someone about which achievements I've earned. I have never once tried to get all the achievements for a game. That sounds really repetitive and boring to me.

To each, their own. I understand that chasing an achievement is fun for some people. It's like a badge of honor for beating a game within the game.

However, if you use a tool like this to gain achievements you didn't earn, I think it means you value Steam achievements about as much as I do. They're worthless if you think you deserve them without putting in the work. I can see the practicality of awarding yourself a badge that you earned, but Steam failed to activate. Whatever. The world isn't any better after hearing my opinion. Not sure why I'm sharing it.
Liam Dawe May 25, 2020
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Liam DaweIf global stats can be messed up so easily, then it's not exactly a very good system is it. I still remember the days where games came with cheats out of the box, often in the manual and it was a very normal and accepted thing. Now people are far too quick to judge.
How is it different from situation with multiplayer games with no anticheat? "If it's easy to hack, then it's not exactly a good game".
Changing your own achievements, does not directly affect anyone else. It's that simple. Apart from the already mentioned global stats issue. Frankly, I don't get why people care so much. It's a thing, has been for years, on Windows long before Linux had it and Valve never stopped it.

Edit: I do think this is an interesting debate though, and I'm glad we're having it. I'm happy to have my mind changed on such software, as I haven't felt like changing your own achievements is really such a problem.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 25 May 2020 at 3:41 pm UTC
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