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I was getting started on an Xbox Live Arcade Indie Game (Penny Arcade's On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3), and I went to check out the Achievements. But I couldn't find Achievements anywhere for this game; not in the in-game menu, and not in the Xbox menu system.

Do Indie games simply not have Achievements, or is this particular game missing them?

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XBox Live Indie Games do not have achievements1, 2. While Microsoft takes responsibility for reviewing and approving XBL Arcade titles, the review process for XBL Indie Games titles isn't controlled by Microsoft. Since they don't control the review process, they don't allow XBLIG games to have achievements that affect Gamerscore.

While Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness episodes 1 and 2 were released as XBLA titles and therefore did have achievements, episode 3 was released as a XBLIG title and lacks achievements.

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  • XBLIG does have a pretty standardized peer-based review process, but yeah, it's obviously not as strict as XBLA. It's also almost entirely hands-off from Microsoft's POV (aside from the fact that they set up the review guidelines). In my own opinion as a one-time XBLIG developer, I feel like a lot of the XBLIG community wouldn't want "gamerscore pinata" games cluttering up the service any more than it already is anyway.
    – Cloudy
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 17:32
  • @cloudymusic Yeah, and even if the XBLIG community did want that, MS wouldn't allow it anyway. They want to keep Gamerscore's appearance of official validity more than anyone else.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 17:36
  • @SevenSidedDie it is very serious business indeed.
    – kotekzot
    Commented Oct 23, 2012 at 19:33
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There can be 'achievements' inside Indie games, however they do not increment / tie to your Xbox Live account, it'd be strictly tied to that Indie game. I would assume this is because there would be users with 500k+ achievement scores if the developers were allowed to put in achievements (Ex beating level 1 would give you 1000 points or something).

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