Gears 5 will unlock achievements for its soon-to-be-removed map builder

If you already have them, you’ll get a reward

You’d be excused for not realizing that Gears 5 has a map builder, and just as some of us are finding out about its existence, the feature is going away. On Twitter today, the Gears of War developers announced plans to remove the map builder — but with a fun twist. The two related Gears 5 map achievements will be unlocked automatically for all players.

These achievements are related to the Escape mode, specifically:

• I Made It All by Myself (10) — Create and publish an Escape Hive.
• Homegrown Give (10) — Complete a Featured community build Escape Hive.

According to The Coalition, if you already got the Escape Hive achievements before the map builder’s departure, you’ll get an “exclusive banner” and 10,000 coins, respectively.

https://twitter.com/GearsofWar/status/1518999780390748160

While the tweet didn’t specify an exact timeline, I just hopped into Gears 5 through Xbox cloud streaming and, after hitting the main menu, both achievements popped for me.

More games should handle achievements this way

I’ve absolutely engaged with map makers and other supplemental content in games purely to round out my achievement/trophy lists. And with games often shedding content in their old age, the completionist community has made a point to always call out time-limited or otherwise questionable unlock criteria so that players are informed with plenty of advance notice. I get why “retired” achievements and trophies aren’t always handed out, but it should be the standard practice; it should be future-proofed, if possible.

So why is Gears 5 ditching the map builder, anyway? Presumably, too few players engaged with community-created Hive maps for it to be worth dealing with from either an ongoing technical, cost, or customer support standpoint. These modes tend to be pretty finite. I’m not trying to downplay this for folks who liked the map builder, but the writing is often on the wall. Maybe next time the mode will be more exhaustive and have more visibility.

In today’s map builder removal announcement, The Coalition noted that it’s focused on “future projects.” The next Gears and a new IP? I hope those rumors pan out.