TECH NEWS – Disappearing profiles in family groups; achievements for a game we’ve never played, and the removal of support for older versions of Windows, just to mention the latest Steam “surprises”…
Steam users have reported an achievement from The Universim mysteriously appearing on their account despite never having tried the sandbox title. Initially released by Crytivo on Steam Early Access in 2018, The Universim has the usual list of achievements. However, the achievement in question was divided among the players due to its presence.
The Universim comes from developer and publisher Crytivo (Prehistoric Kingdom, Trail Out, Above Snakes). It’s a massive city-building game packed with “God Game” elements for ultimate player control. It allows development to spread “over time”. Currently, in early access, version 1.0 is targeted for release on January 22, 2024. It currently has a Very Positive rating on Steam.
As Crytivo works towards a full release of The Universim 1.0, some players already see achievements unlocking without actually playing the game.
Reddit user DjuncleMC posted a strange discovery online about Genesis, one of The Universim’s 42 achievements. According to the player, he got the achievement despite never having played the game before. Genesis, which requires the player to build the first simulated civilization in the game, is the only achievement that has been unlocked. Thus, the question of its existence arose.
As it turns out, other Steam players shared similar findings, claiming that there were zero game sessions as well. Some people chimed in with their interpretation of how the Steam achievement unlock came about. Some suspect this is an anti-piracy measure; others believe that the achievement conditions are somehow buggy.
DjuncleMC responds to some of the comments on the mystery post and even claims to have “found the culprits” behind the achievement’s mystery. Note that the performance condition is set to 0/0 instead of 0/1. This forces Steam to believe that the player has already unlocked the achievement in the game. It’s unclear if this is why the Genesis has mysteriously unlocked for players, though it seems likely for an Early Access game on Steam.
Disappearing family accounts on Steam?!
Apart from that, Steam has had quite a few issues and bugs lately. For example, family sharing also became buggy: several people complained that their friends’ shared games disappeared. Even quite randomly. Some people had all their familiar games disappear. In another case, the shared games of two out of three acquaintances disappeared, and only the third one was seen. Then it was the other way around: the third disappeared, and only the other two were seen… In this case, it took a week for everyone to be resolved. But many others have reported similar problems.
What about you, Windows 7 and 8…?
PC gamers using old versions of Windows will finally need to upgrade if they want to continue playing the games in their Steam library. Valve announced this week that on January 1, 2024, support for Steam on Windows 7 and 8 will end.
This timing is still quite generous to users of the 14- and 11-year-old operating systems, given that Microsoft will end support for both in January 2023.
GPU manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD have also stopped supporting their latest GPUs under Windows 7 or Windows 8 a long time ago.
This move will affect a vanishing but persistent number of Steam users. According to Valve’s own survey data for February 2023, the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 account for just under two per cent of all Steam usage. That’s next to nothing for Windows 10 and Windows 11 (nearly 95 per cent). But all macOS versions together only account for 2.37 per cent. And all Linux versions combined (including Steam Deck) account for just 1.27 per cent.
According to Valve, the main culprit is the built-in Chromium-based browser that Steam uses to display the store and other parts of the user interface. Chrome stopped supporting Windows 7 and Windows 8 around the same time Microsoft ended support for the operating systems early last year. Versions that still work under Windows 7 and 8 will be subject to security flaws as time goes on and increasingly to rendering errors and other functional issues.
Upgrading to Windows 10 can still be relatively easy for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, thanks to Microsoft’s free upgrade offer that actually never ended, even though it was supposed to end in 2016…
If your computer is still running relatively well on Windows 7 or 8, you should do the same for Windows 10. Windows 10 will continue to receive security updates from Microsoft until at least October 2025. However, if you want to upgrade to Windows 11 all the way, you will probably need a hardware upgrade. Or you could risk an unsupported installation. Due to Windows 11’s stricter hardware requirements, it won’t run on most PCs that also run Windows 7 or Windows 8.
I have never played this game before. Why do I have an achievement?
byu/DjuncleMC inSteam
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