The Only Way To Get This Steam Achievement Is To Cheat

Invisible, Inc. is a game that is all about secrecy and hacking. Fitting, then, that one of its achievements can only be nabbed if players mess around with the game’s files.

As Siliconera reports, back in early May some Steam players were stumped by an achievement in Invisible, Inc. Called “Meta-Hacking,” its a hidden achievement that nobody knew how to get. Luckily, Steam user Brotigan noticed that the game’s code had lines that referred to the achievement, except they were “commented out”—that is, they were lines of code that were not actionable by the game. Unable to find a normal means of winning the achievement, Brotigan tinkered with the game’s files and simply gave it to themselves.

“I’m not sure if it’s a legit way or just cheating,” Brotigan wrote. “Hopefully one of the developers can clarify this situation.”

But on May 15th, an new update dropped for Invisible, Inc. It was then that Brotigan noticed that the game’s code suddenly included this:

if not config.DEV and KLEIAchievements then

— Yes, this achievement exists… No, I’m not giving it away for free. 🙂

—KLEIAchievements:achieve( “META_HACKING” )

end

It was the developers, Klei Entertainment, winking at players who dived into the code. It was a way of saying, yes, this actually is the way to get this achievement—hence the name, Meta-Hacking! Pretty great, yeah?

Nowadays players have worked out a specific method to get the achievement, and it’s not as much of a mystery anymore. Still, Meta-Hacking is stands as one of the most creative achievements any developer has implemented on Steam. Props, Klei Entertainment.