> Although I do dislike that there's a large category of "achievements" nowadays that are nothing more than telemetry for developers.

That's always been the case. Some XBoX360 games went as far as having "reached the main menu" achievements in order to create a baseline user count that didn't include demo terminals running the attract mode on loop.

I agree that cheevos-as-telemetry sounds bad at face value, but consider it the other way around:

Getting pain-free already anonymized telemetry stats via achievements through platform holders has long been a bulwark against intrusive bullshit telemetry by way of making the effort-to-reward ratio of the later just not worth it. This is not unlike the classic "The way to stop piracy is to provide a better UX" argument.

It also has the very important added benefit of making what is being collected extremely transparent to users.