Steam Achievements not showing up in Desktop Mode

[AgentAquaM]

Greetings,

I have been attempting to figure out why and I am at a loss.

• Achievements have been scanned and enabled.
  • Retroachievements work
  • GOG Achievements work
  • Steam Achievements will show up as "No Achievements" while in desktop mode.
    • The Achievement ICON Still shows up.
    • On some themes that show achievement progress, some games still show the progress.
    • Achievements still how up in Big Box Mode.
• Themes
  • Tried multiple themes, uninstalled and reinstalled.  Nothing.
• Steam
  • Re-established the API Key and the Profile URL
  • Able to scan for steam games and successfully import.
• Settings.xml
  • Does show steam games as to having "True" for achievements.
• I have uninstalled and reinstalled Launchbox
  • Did not remove the xml files.
• Achievements not consistent with big box mode vs. desktop in this situation:
  • Ex: Game I had shows up as "No Achievements" but in some themes where as some games have an achievement progress this game example does not.  
  • If I pull up the game in Big Box mode, I can see the achievement progress, and if I load it back to desktop mode with some themes that progress is not reflecting.

Any thoughts on where I can look next or is anyone aware of a fix that may already exist? I am believing this is not so much that the apis are not talking because whatever bigbox mode does to display the achievements is actually working.  But for the life of me I can't seem to figure out what got corrupted or wrong to prevent the desktop mode from actually displaying achievements OR even updating once achievements have been looked at.  But still knows enough to indicate achievements.

[JoeViking245]

24 minutes ago, AgentAquaM said:

Any thoughts on where I can look next or is anyone aware of a fix that may already exist?

First off, THANK YOU for the troubleshooting you did and the well detailed and formatted explanation!!!  It's refreshing to see.  

Not being a part of the development team, a guess is that Big Box and LaunchBox (desktop mode) uses [similar but] different methods for obtaining the data displayed (or not displayed, as is the case for your LaunchBox [desktop mode]).

You mentioned seeing "No Achievements", which indicates it's not (or at least shouldn't be) a theme issue.  It's "showing" them but saying you don't have any for that game.  (You mentioned trying multiple themes. I just tested with Default and the achievements appeared for games that have them.)

Try forcing a scan for achievements for the specific platform.  Select the platform, the Tools < Achievements < Scan For Windows... (replace "Windows" with whatever your platform name is.)   Hoping that's different than your very first bulleted item. 😊

 

One other troubleshoot/test would be to run the LB installer from your /Updates/ folder (e.g. D:/LaunchBox/Updates/LaunchBox-13.24-Setup.exe) and create a clean install (with no leftover xml files) into a new location (e.g. D:/LaunchBox Test/).  If you do this, before clicking the final Install button, check the path to make sure it didn't 'double up'.  e.g. D:/LaunchBox Test/LaunchBox/  (it's a thing "that happens")

Then add your Steam games and check for Achievements to show in LaunchBox.

[AgentAquaM]

On 9/27/2025 at 12:48 PM, JoeViking245 said:

Try forcing a scan for achievements for the specific platform.  Select the platform, the Tools < Achievements < Scan For Windows... (replace "Windows" with whatever your platform name is.)   Hoping that's different than your very first bulleted item. 😊

One other troubleshoot/test would be to run the LB installer from your /Updates/ folder (e.g. D:/LaunchBox/Updates/LaunchBox-13.24-Setup.exe) and create a clean install (with no leftover xml files) into a new location (e.g. D:/LaunchBox Test/).  If you do this, before clicking the final Install button, check the path to make sure it didn't 'double up'.  e.g. D:/LaunchBox Test/LaunchBox/  (it's a thing "that happens")

Then add your Steam games and check for Achievements to show in LaunchBox.

 

 

Alright, so I did a clean install and reinstalled twice.

• New Directory, old directory was erased out
• Registry Entries were deleted, though nothing seemed to indicate what I was looking for.
• Installed in new directory.
  • 1st Attempt: 
    • New Directory
    • Used credentials for logging into the database system
    • Used previous licensing file.
    • Used Steam and GOG credentials on start up wizard.
    • Still same problem.
  • 2nd Attempt:
    • Cleared out new directory for reinstallation
    • Only used license file for wizard
    • For some reason upon set up even without setting up steam or my launchboxdb credentials I was still automatically importing my library which was weird.  Deleted all, imported games.
      • GOG has a achievements
      • Rom files are ok and have achievements
      • Steam still does not show achievements.  Despite the ironically showing the achievement icon next to game titles.
    • Checked Big Box Mode:
      • Still shows achievements, but I did notice that a game I had earned achievements on in Steam, is not reflecting earned achievements in big box mode.
• I'm starting to think that it's an access issue.  Because despite being "visible" in Big Box, it's not showing earned.

Any other thoughts?

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, AgentAquaM said:

Any other thoughts?

Sorry, I do not.  Just seems odd they're showing in Big Box (though lagging in updating) and showing "No Achievements" in LaunchBox.

At this point, you can wait and see if one of the LB Team is able to respond here sometime this week, and/or submit a bug report (top of this page under Help & Support) and wait to hear something back form there.

[AgentAquaM]

1 hour ago, JoeViking245 said:

Sorry, I do not.  Just seems odd they're showing in Big Box (though lagging in updating) and showing "No Achievements" in LaunchBox.

At this point, you can wait and see if one of the LB Team is able to respond here sometime this week, and/or submit a bug report (top of this page under Help & Support) and wait to hear something back form there.

Just as I gave up, I found the solution.

So after realizing that while it is displaying in Big Box mode the problem is still that it's not properly pulling data.

• It's able to know that items have achievements because that is pulled from Steam.
• It does not update NEW achievements, nor can it pull achievement information.
• I'm able to import my steam library so there isn't a problem with communications between the web-api for Launchbox AND the Steam system.

So that tells me, when a "Achievement Scan" is initiated, it goes to the service, logs in with the api key (automatic credential there, good shit) but the comes back with nothing. So the problem started looking at the fact that Steam was not sharing the information.

I did some digging and found that the steam profile while set to public has had it's game information set to "Friends Only".  I turned that off, rescanned and relogged into Steam.

Works.

So moral of this story, always check the permissions and privacy settings on all involved systems.