It's being reported that Microsoft has implemented three brand-new Xbox achievement rules that all games will seemingly need to abide by in the future, and they're focused around ensuring achievements can't be earned too easily.
This is courtesy of True Achievements, which says that games will have to avoid the following:
- All achievements can be unlocked within a few minutes of starting the game
- Achievements do not represent a thorough exploration of or engagement with game content
- Achievements can be unlocked without any (or minimal) user input unless required as part of the core gameplay loop
The outlet's source says that these three rules were added on May 1st, 2023, and they've been integrated as part of the "Xbox Requirement, XR-055 Achievements and Gamerscore" category.
However, as noted in the report, we've already seen some games release on the Xbox Store since May 1st that appear to break the first rule, so it's unknown whether they'd already passed certification prior to that date, or whether Team Xbox is simply willing to be quite lenient about the whole situation. Microsoft has yet to provide any official details.
These changes follow a recent situation in which Xbox ended up removing certain versions of a game with easy achievements from the Microsoft Store, with the developer insisting at the time that "no rules were broken on our part". Various other games have also been causing controversy lately due to their particularly easy Xbox achievements.