After long and interesting discussions on the Club Piczle Discord I have decided to change the Steam Achievements in Piczle World of Puzzles (as of May 15th, v0.095).
In-game badges will remain as they are, but there is now an entirely new set of Steam achievements separate from these badges. But for why, you may ask? Well, there were a few issues:
PWOP has not yet reached the audience that Valve deems sufficient to lift the Steam achievement limit. As I had designed well over 100 badges for PWOP I had hoped that limit might be raised by the time I added more content, but alas. This indecorous imbalance was starting to grate.
Secondly, some achievements seemed to invite achievement hunters to flood the Workshop with zero-effort puzzles that were ruining the enjoyment of other players. This was both an oversight on my part, and a bad design decision...um, also on my part. This prompted a rethink and a frank and interesting discussion within the Piczle community.
These new Steam achievements are different in a few specific ways:
Achievements for clearing a set number of puzzles are no longer tied to specific Piczle puzzle types. This way you can simply focus on the puzzles you enjoy most, without feeling forced to play puzzle types you enjoy less.
Workshop achievements have been axed.
Various achievements are implemented to have players try out functionality they may otherwise miss.
As I mentioned, in-game badges remain as they are. I am assuming, and hoping, that people that care about badges care about Piczle World of Puzzles and see them as fun progress rather than "must unlock achievement at all costs!". That said, zero-effort Workshop puzzles will still be pruned based on player reports, and flooding the Workshop with zero-effort puzzles will lead to them being banned, as they can severely impact the enjoyment of other players!
I hope this shift won't cause too many issues. Long-time players should get relevant achievements unlocking immediately based on past play statistics, hopefully, but do let me know in the Discord if technical issues arise and I shall try my best to fix them in time!