Dear Steam Profile Features Limited, I Hate You

One of my favourite things to do is complete games 100% — something about being able to finish every achievement makes me feel jubilant as I see my Steam profile get just a little bit more fleshed out. It doesn't help that I started gaming rather late, and my profile just isn't as impressive as I want it to be. Sure, I have achievements that others would envy, but my measly 26 Perfect Games and 34% Average Game Completion Rate (at the time of writing) are not only laughable, but they're plainly embarrassing.

As an overachiever, I tend to try to excel at the things I do, and having a respectable Steam profile falls straight into that category. My goal is simple: I want either a game that I have a lot of hours on (anything above 1,000 would suffice, though I often aim to have more than 100 for the games I most like), have a lot of Perfect Games (I've been aiming for at least 100 on this one), or have a decent Average Completion Rate (I'd love 70%+, but let's get down to Earth for a second — I have 34%, that's laughable). So, onwards on my journey I began; I care not which one of these I complete first, but my sole goal is to have at least one... someday.

 

I'm fairly new to Steam, despite what my profile age might have you think — I joined Steam to play Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead with my wife many a year ago but didn't delve into actually playing until far later on, near the release of Fallout 4. So naturally, despite how elegant my 11-year badge is, it makes my Steam profile look embarrassing (thus why I hide it away and instead have the Winter 2021 - Badge Level 1, though that's just because it's a cute wittle bwunny). My journey had been going smoothly, with numerous titles scratched off my list every once in a while since I don't often find the time to invest a lot to get achievements. Recently, whilst playing A Fisherman's Tale, I got my first Perfect VR game and moved on to others, as they are relatively short and incredibly fun.

Now, much like everyone, my household severely struggled due to the global pandemic, and my wife and I have taken quite a liking to free games, so naturally, she went ahead to look for free VR games for us to try out; she found me Spellbound Spire. In this dizzying title, you play as a mummy that is on a mission to restore peace in the tower and rid it of corruption. My room was far too small to play the game properly (with it being a room-scale title), but I managed to make it through despite slamming into the door knob more times than I care to admit. After finishing the game, a couple of minutes later (it's relatively short), I found out that I'd gotten most of the achievements and thought, "You know what? I'm gonna 100% it". I spun and spun around the room like a mad woman, tried to save Jimmy the snail (who we later found out was actually named Charles, so we dubbed Chuck), and managed to squeeze a total playtime of 114 minutes and had an absolute blast. Triumphantly and very tired due to leading a predominantly sedentary life until then, I laid down on the floor to look at my counter going up from 26 to 27... And it didn't.

 

"Strange", I thought, "It must take a while to update". On my merry way, I went to let my wife play because she'd seen me ceaselessly spin around the room so much I'd managed to worry both the dog and the cat. A couple of hours later, I returned to see that my counter was still at 26, and I began to worry. It didn't take me long until I found what would soon become my archnemesis: "Profile Features Limited".

In the store page for some of the smaller titles on Steam, you'll find a section where you get all of the information about the game (such as the playable modes, whether it has trading cards, etc.), and in it, you can sometimes find the Profile Features Limited section, which says, and I quote from the heart from reading it several times from both frustration and depression:

 

"This game is not currently eligible to appear in certain showcases on your Steam Profile, and does not contribute to global Achievement or game collector counts"

A few words sprung to mind after reading that — some were profanity, but perhaps the most relatable were heart-wrenched, destroyed, and disheartened. I'd carried Chuck the snail in my third run (he had an accidental death on my first playthrough after I misunderstood what a particularly nefarious purple barrier did) for nought and managed to save the world from the corruption of the spire... for nought. I swore to myself that now before I played another game and tried to finish it 100%, I'd forever check if it was part of the games with the Profile Features Limited group. And you want to guess what I did?... Forgot to check almost immediately after and finished another game that wouldn't count towards my total.

 

After having spent four hours trying to finish Wordle 4 and getting stupidly excited about the prospect of getting to the sweet 27 Perfect Games, I was met with my worst fear once again: Steam Profile Limited. After spending an embarrassingly long amount of time trying to figure out the words "COW" and "EGG" in a 3x3 puzzle despite being a journalist, I'd managed to make a fool out of myself... again.

Customary to what I did last time with my “Dear ELDEN RING, I Hate Your Arenas”, I have promptly drafted a hate letter that I intend to mail to Steam immediately.

“Dear Valve,

I’ve spent many an hour throughout my journeys as a hapless mummy stuck in Spellbound Spire, and I did my absolute best to save Jimmy Chuck the snail. This challenge was no small feat, as chucking (get it?) him across the chasm gave me heart-attack-inducing levels of anxiety every time I thought I’d surely fail. Despite my greatest efforts and my countless of hours spent trying to accomplish the task of getting 27 Perfect Games on my profile, my achievements go unnoticed thanks to your Profile Features Limited.

Not to mention that I had to go to my wife with my tail tucked between my legs to ask her to help me figure out words from Wordle 4 from 3x3 puzzles that I should have figured out easily, none of which I care to put down on this handwritten letter.

Please fix this feature, if not for the unfortunate folk that have spent hours on end farming for fruitless labour, then for the sacrifice of Chuck Senior and Chuck II.

Sincerely,

Artura Dawn”

So, what's the point of this article? Well, aside from venting my frustration, I hope you'll take one lesson with yourself: if you're an achievement hunter, never forget to check the Steam Profile Limited section. Oh, and perhaps play Spellbound Spiral to get it recognised enough to allow my success with Chuck the snail to finally be validated? Please?