Is that "telemetry" or just "low-effort achievements"? Lots of modern games have low-effort achievements, in part due to requirements to put in achievements even when the game developers don't want to do so. (Some games do a great job integrating achievements or even making entertaining gameplay elements out of them; others, not so much.)

In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without thinking about how fun they'd be?