Steam Achievement names can be upsettingly long, Cookie Clicker discovers

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Only 5.9% of players have learnt about biscuit pioneer Adolphus W. Green, apparently.

Lengthy text for a Cookie Clicker achievement
(Image credit: Valve)

Achievement names often feel like an afterthought. Usually forgettable, at best a mildly funny pun beeping onto your screen as an award for collecting 15 trinkets. But it turns out that Steam's cheevos may let you store a whole lot more than just a passing gag, a fact the developers of Cookie Clicker are acutely aware of.

Cookie Clicker recently made the jump to Steam, and as such, sports fancy new features like cloud saves and Steam achievements. But as spotted by digital artist Kha on Twitter, Cookie Clicker's developers evidently appear to have discovered that Steam achievements sport a shockingly long character limit—far beyond what could ever fit in that tiny pop-up in the corner of your screen. 

There's a comic brilliance to the way the achievement bleeds off the page in the above tweet. But there's more to it, providing a brief Wikipedia summary of Nabisco founder Adolphus W. Green in a friendly, if matter-of-fact tone. In full, it reads: 

"There's really no hard limit to how long these achievement names can be and to be quite honest I'm rather curious to see how far we can go. Adolphus W. Green (1844–1917) started as the Principal of the Groton School in 1864. By 1865, he became second assistant librarian at the New York Mercantile Library; from 1867 to 1869, he was promoted to full librarian. From 1869 to 1873, he worked for Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, a law firm co-founded by William M. Evarts, Charles Ferdinand Southmayd and Joseph Hodges Choate. He was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in 1873. Anyway, how's your day been?"

At time of writing, only 5.9% of players have unlocked the achievement, rewarded for baking 10 sextillion cookies per second. 

Despite being a good eight years old, Cookie Clicker still holds up. The game quickly reached an "overwhelmingly positive" rating on Steam—proof that while a lot may have changed in the past 10 years, our collective desire to see numbers go up (no matter how arbitrary those numbers may be) remains as strong as ever.

Natalie Clayton
Natalie Clayton
Features Producer

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.