Mortal Shell 2 devs didn't mean to lock Slayer Seal players out of achievements

The developers behind Mortal Shell 2 say they didn't intend to completely block Steam achievements for players using the Slayer Seal, the game's built-in easy mode — but that's exactly what happened, and the community has noticed.

The Slayer Seal gives players a powerful punch and lets ranged weapons deal Break damage, making the notoriously brutal soulslike considerably more manageable. The problem: equipping it disables Steam achievements entirely — and they stay locked even after you take the Seal off. The devs have acknowledged they "ended up kind of cornered" by the implementation, saying locking everybody out wasn't the goal.

Mortal Shell 2 is the follow-up to Cold Symmetry's 2020 cult soulslike, a game that leaned hard into the genre's punishing design. Gating achievements behind difficulty choices is a recurring debate in the soulslike space — some studios do it deliberately as a design statement, others treat achievements as a separate progression layer entirely.

Reddit has split predictably: some players feel penalised for using an accessibility option the developers themselves put in the game, while others can't work up much outrage over Steam achievements in the first place. Whether the studio plans a fix hasn't been confirmed yet.