Out of all living creatures on Earth, humans have the unique capacity for experiencing a wide range of emotions. Not only that, but the severity and direction of any given feeling can vary by infinitesimally marginal degrees, such that there are probably millions of slightly different shades.
Positive or negative, strong or muted—and by how much—make for quite the rainbow of sentiments. In a sense, the limit on human emotion doesn’t really exist if you zoom in far enough, so long as you take care to quantify the difference between relational ones like overjoyed and exultant or disappointed and unsatisfied.
For now, let’s focus on fear. I’d argue it’s one of the most base emotions that we can experience. It’s what allowed our species to survive up to this point, by ensuring we always watched for threats, real and imagined, in the darkness. It just so happens that the dangers of today tend to be much more complex than they were for our hunter-gatherer societies from thousands of years ago.
Nowadays, we’re scared of being late to work. Of disappointing our parents by not following their life script. That our crush might not return our feelings. There are all kinds of stressors that the modern-day person has to manage that didn’t exist in the past.
I won’t pretend that these situations aren’t worth being afraid of. In addition, there are many worse things that no one wants to even think about. But let’s not get lost in the grander vision that will just leave us chasing shadows.
For this article, we’re going to talk about video games, of course. Below, we discuss a handful of scenarios that most trophy hunters would be afraid of. Whether it’s interacting with other gamers (scary!) or getting pressured into completing games you never wanted to play, there are tons of things that completionists have grown to be wary of after some experience with the hobby.
Table of Contents
8. Servers Going Offline Too Soon
You run the risk of permanently engraving an incomplete game on your trophy list every time you play a multiplayer title. There is always a chance that the developers decide tomorrow to take the game offline. And with it, go all your dreams of obtaining its platinum trophy.
If you somehow were one of the 2,845 players on PSN Profiles who played Concord on launch, this probably haunts you. The game launched on August 23, 2024, and suffered one of the largest flops in the entire gaming industry. Sony announced on September 3, 2024, that the game would be taken offline, and just three days later, on September 6, 2024, it happened. Just two weeks after Concord’s debut, the game was taken down permanently.
This entire fiasco happened so quickly that trophy hunters were left scrambling to try and complete the platinum trophy in record time. Players were literally jumping off cliffs because it was faster to earn the needed experience points than playing legitimately.
Unfortunately, many were not able to dedicate the time required to get the platinum trophy. Of those 2,845 players who played Concord, only 70 got the platinum trophy. That means 2,775 trophy hunters got screwed.
Another game I’d be leery of is Rayman Legends. If you started today, it would take you 3+ months to earn the platinum trophy no matter how badly you wanted it faster. If they took the servers down in the middle of your journey, you’d be up a creek with no recourse. Not to mention that the game is inundated with cheaters, making the online component even worse. It’s worth noting that the PlayStation 3 servers have already been offline for three and a half years, so the PlayStation 4 ones may not be far off.
All that to say, I definitely wouldn’t start a trophy hunt in Rayman Legends personally.
This is the kind of situation that haunts you. If you’re a trophy hunter with a perfectly spic and span profile, losing out on a 100% you otherwise would have earned but instead lost out on through no fault of your own is infuriating.
So much so, that it informs what games you’re willing to play. In a sense, your entire risk profile for online titles changes to be less accommodating. Every new online video game is a potential threat to your profile’s prestige unless proven otherwise.
7. Updates That Add Tons of Trophies
Every trophy hunter is familiar with the wave of relief that comes with a 100%’d title that took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Finally, after 100+ hours, you’ve managed to get all the achievements. Often, the most validating moment in a trophy hunt is when you’re finally able to delete a game from your hard drive. You feel like you’re ten feet tall when you do it, ready to start considering which title’s next on the chopping block like you’re some kind of Nordic god with a complex.
Huh? What’s that? There’s more?
That’s right, that game you thought you were signing off on has just come back from Hel with brand new DLC trophy sets. It feels like half the time you think you’re done with a game, you’ve got to redownload a 50 GB file and get back to work to maintain your 100% supremacy.
Take Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, for example. This game received a staggering eight additional stacks of trophies over two years post-release. It was like the trophy hunt that never ended! Great for fans begging for new content, not so great for trophy hunters long since exhausted with the game.
While researching for this article, I was rigid in my seat for fear that a new DLC list had been published since I last played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla three years ago. Over all of that content, I spent 250 hours in the world. Although many people criticized the game heavily, I actually quite enjoyed it—for a time. By the end of all the extra content, I was pretty burnt out.
It is a very rare case for me to want more trophies to be published in a game. Some trophy hunters crave an excuse to return to old favorites, and that’s fair. Personally, I generally find myself more interested in new experiences. Hence, I sometimes fear starting new games that I suspect will have this problem.
Dead by Daylight is a classic example. It has so many trophies that they needed to create entirely different “game” listings on PlayStation 4 to contain them all, as it overfilled the console’s built-in achievement management system.
My personal current angst in this category is Marathon. This game is fully online and somehow has a very slight trophy set. That fact alone is scary for a trophy hunter. I don’t trust it. 13 trophies in total for a live service title? That said, Destiny 2 (the game developer’s other major project) did not get post-release trophy stacks, so it could really go either way. Depending on how things shake out, I may be finding myself babysitting Marathon more out of obligation than enjoyment in the future.
6. Boosting Groups
I can’t be the only one who both cringes and perks up when I see multiplayer trophies that can be boosted. On the one hand, it’s more personal and has the chance to be awkward. On the other hand, it’s a more controlled environment that makes earning achievements easier. Or at least, it’s supposed to be that way.
Enter different time zones, people not showing up, selfish players who leave the session early after getting theirs, hosts who don’t communicate changes in plans, way too many players joining and making the communication channels confusing, nobody researching ahead of time what to do to get a trophy… There is no end to ways that boosting sessions can go wrong.
At least earning the vast majority of online multiplayer trophies naturally relies only on your own gameplay skills. They may be hard or require time to get the stars to align, but they’re far less likely to give you the uniquely infuriating experience of trying to herd cats.
Some of us trophy hunters clearly have a different level of dedication to the hobby and respect for other people’s time. Personally, if I say I’m going to be somewhere at a certain time, I’m going to be there barring total calamity. And I’m going to expect any individual who has committed to the event to be there too.
Once you’ve been burned in a boosting group, you’ll likely be wary of them in the future. I certainly do not join every single one I look at, even when it’s a game I really want to work on. That’s because I’m carefully sussing out whether or not any particular session will be a pain above and beyond the trophy it would potentially net me. If I get a bad feeling, I’ll skip.
Need some tips on how to boost multiplayer trophies more efficiently with other players? My first recommendation is to start your own session as the host, so you can set the tone straight away. Check out my article on the ins and outs of proper etiquette here.
5. New Game in a Series You Previously 100%’d
The one thing more impressive than fully completing a video game is fully completing a video game series. To show that you can go through an innumerable amount of hardships in order to show off your favorite series. When you first dedicate yourself to it, there’s a set number of titles. You can do all your research ahead of time and decide whether or not everything is within your personal risk tolerance. There may be a hard trophy here or there, but with advance knowledge, it shouldn’t be anything beyond your capabilities.
That is, until the game developers release a new game in that very same series you 100%’d months or even years ago. Usually, a new title is a happy time for fans. For trophy hunters? Not always. Because that new game may have a horribly annoying or challenging trophy set above and beyond the rest of the series.
And? If you’re already nine games deep… There’s no way you can just skip number ten. It’s like the sunk cost fallacy. You’ve already put in so much time, effort, and sometimes money in. To not keep that part of your profile fully complete is unfathomable.
And that’s not even to mention the possibility that the game developers could completely change course and alter what their series is all about. For example, the original God of War trilogy plays far differently than the most recent entries.
Or maybe they keep things exactly the same and that is even scarier. If you’ve finished a series fully like Wolfenstein, you probably wouldn’t be thrilled about a new entry unless you’re a masochist who enjoys a punishing trophy hunt.
That’s how I feel about the Monster Prom series. I’ve written trophy guides for all three of the games released on PlayStation (Monster Prom: XXL, Monster Camp: XXL, and Monster Roadtrip: XXL) and therefore feel like somewhat of an expert on them.
Even though I know exactly what to expect from future entries… I am still terrified for the moment I discover any one of them comes to console. Because that will mean that I am morally obligated to complete their trophy hunts at all costs, and I know that that cost will be tremendous.
It doesn’t take much to see why obligation bleeding into your hobby is a bad mix. We want to have fun, but we also want an ego boost. That’s why we hesitate when making big commitments on video game series. Get too invested and it may as well be a second marriage, and if that fails, well… Awkward.
4. No Auto-Pop Feature
This entry might be a bit tongue-in-cheek. Of all the possible things to be afraid of, auto-pop isn’t the first one most people would think of. Indeed, at most this was a nice feature to have for the transition between the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 generations. I know that many players still have not upgraded. However, for those that have, I will say this.
So many trophy hunters are beholden to the simple belief that a bigger number is better. That getting a platinum trophy twice with auto-pop makes their statistics and profile more impressive. They often are the first ones to jump to forums and ask whether auto-pop is possible on any recent title with a multi-generational release. These players are free to their own opinion on the value of such platinum trophies, and I will agree to disagree.
But I daresay that these hunters may be a little spooked at the lack of an auto-pop feature. If they want two platinum trophies, they’ll have to work harder to get them.
On the other hand, trophy hunters that are still on PlayStation 4 and make the jump to PlayStation 5 later may find themselves worried about whether all their game saves will transfer properly and allow them to keep making progress, just on the better hardware. I’d think that most folks would want the better gaming experience if they had the choice between the two, after all.
Personally, my only fear at this point with auto-popping achievements is the potential that it will fail to register properly. That it gives some trophies, but not everything it was supposed to. This always leads to frustration and some very strange clean-up playthroughs when it happens. It may also result in some desperate attempts to reload cloud saves to see if they help (they never do). Which leads us straight into the next point.
3. Buggy Achievements
Dealing with a buggy achievement is ubiquitous to trophy hunting. Although this tends to be less of an issue nowadays when playing reputable titles, it still happens from time to time. And oh boy, does this send red hot fear to trophy hunters’ hearts.
50 hours of soul-crushing grinding in a game you didn’t even like, all for one trophy that you didn’t even earn? Rage. It’s the kind of thing that forever turns a person away from a game series or its developer.
Take, for example, Hogwarts Legacy. There’s a trophy called “Collector’s Edition” that is earned for completing all collections. That’s this game’s version of collectibles, in the sense that it combines nearly everything you do collect in one neat list. There are 603 items to be found to complete this achievement.
Which would be all fine and dandy, if the game weren’t so buggy on release. There are tons of reports of trophy hunters being completely locked out of this achievement and needing to replay the entire game to do it properly. Could you imagine needing to retread your steps for that many things?
Thankfully, I waited long enough before pursuing my trophy hunt in earnest for Hogwarts Legacy that all the various game-breaking bugs did not affect me. I had fun with the title, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted to redo it all for one trophy.
It’s that moment when a game bugs out and denies you from an achievement that you rightfully earned that makes you wonder what all of this is really for. I’ve never felt more like I’ve wasted my time with something than when it happens to me.
Like, sure, ruining dinner sucks and you’ll have to cook a new meal as a result of your blunder. Or, if you admit you’re a terrible chef, you can resign yourself to ordering takeout and never touching the stove again. But a trophy bugging through no fault of your own in Cyberpunk 2077? Pack it up, we’re done here. I will be haunting CD Projekt Red personally if anyone wants to join me.
2. Getting Messaged Randomly
Long-time trophy hunters with decorated trophy shelves will recognize this entry. It’s a nice problem to have: popularity in your niche. The more impressive and credible your rap sheet is, the more likely you are to receive “fan mail.”
It’s not really fan mail. We’re not that cool yet. It’s actually messages from other players, usually asking for one of three things:
- Can you help me boost this trophy?
- Do you have any tips for this trophy?
- Can you Share Play and earn this trophy for me?
When you get random pings from strangers, it can be alarming. Especially when they expect time, energy, or expertise from you with nothing to offer in return. There’s no telling what they’ll ask until you open up the message and read it. That uncertainty and expectation are a little scary.
I’ve received quite a few DMs of this nature. There have been questions and requests for assistance about games like Monster Prom, Naughty Bear, Uncharted, Naruto… The list goes on.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not opposed to helping others. Quite the opposite, really—that’s why I write these articles and make trophy guides, calendars, and other visual aids. It’s just the sudden harshness of an unexpected new notification that breaks up my workflow, for lack of a better term.
And I’m sure many trophy hunters may be a bit more reclusive than they like to admit. Video gaming is often a fairly isolating hobby, especially for those who lean hard on single-player experiences. So socializing even in this setting can be a bit of a fear, too. To be clear, there is no judgment from me on this; people are scary!
1. Playing a New Release Before Trophy Guides Come Out
We’re all gamers before we’re trophy hunters. That means we share all the same base behaviors and thought parameters that everyone else does. Like getting mad at teammates (it’s never our fault we die) or wondering why games aren’t as good as they were when we were kids (the golden age differs for everyone). In this case, we’re talking about FOMO.
If you somehow aren’t familiar, FOMO is the fear of missing out. It’s that almost heightened, adrenaline-boosted state people experience when they see others having fun without them. Humans want to be part of the in-group. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense—humans survive better, together.
For gamers, this instinct resulted in some gnarly predatory microtransaction practices across the industry. In addition, it leads to many of us buying games straight away on release. If it’s a hotly anticipated title with personal significance, of course we’re going to buy it as soon as possible.
And therein lies the problem.
A huge part of trophy hunting counts on there being pre-made guides to rely on when the going gets tough. Especially for things like collectibles or missables. If you go in blind in the early days of a game’s release, you are basically resigning yourself to the near certainty that you will need to do an extra playthrough (at least) to earn the platinum trophy.
That’s why I always hesitate before starting a brand-new release. If it’s a title I know I will love and want to play more of anyways, I’ll proceed against my better judgment. Or, if it’s a title I know with some sleuthing will be straightforward, I will proceed as well. Otherwise… it’s a 50/50.
It is worth noting that for major releases, trophy guides are often up very early during the release window. That’s because many reviewers and publications get access to the game weeks early. This is great for those games, but less useful for indies and niche titles. Also, the lack of long-term updating on such posts can often be detrimental, as game updates can change the landscape of a trophy hunt very significantly over time.
Conclusion
In the grand scheme of things, there isn’t anything to really be afraid of about trophy hunting. Even at its worst, it will never be something that ruins your life in the same way that a motor vehicle can. There are some annoyances, some things worth watching out for, and some things you just have to experience for yourself before you know to avoid it.
That’s the thing about fear. A child isn’t born knowing that an open flame will burn them. They haven’t learned that it is something to watch out for. Rookie trophy hunters will need to find their own way if they don’t heed the advice of their elders.
What are you most afraid of as a trophy hunter? What advice would you give to a brand-new player to help avoid your mistakes? Let us know in the comments below! Looking for a game that should scare you straight? Check out our rundown of Resident Evil 6 next. Or are you looking for something that couldn’t possibly scare you? Check out our trophy guide for Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy! instead. Be warned that there is more to that adorable title than it appears…
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