Do console commands affect Steam achievements?

Solution 1:

Console commands do not affect achievements in Skyrim. I've used it to clip through places when I ended up falling and becoming stuck and still received achievements in the same session. I've also togged tgm on occasion while testing stuff and still received achievements after I finished testing without restarting my game.

Once you get past all the speculation, this thread seems to confirm that using console commands do not affect achievements at all.

Of note from that thread:

• One person got the buy a house achievement right after giving himself 5000 gold via additem.
• Another person still continued to receive achievements despite walking around with an max encumbrance weight of 5000 via modav.

Solution 2:

NO, using the console does not disqualify you from gaining Steam achievements in Skyrim. I use console commands quite frequently, ranging from the innocuous (fov 90) to the uber-cheaty (tgm, tim, player.modav carryweight 1000) and have received all Steam achievements corresponding to events in my game, even within the same game session - restarting is not required.

In the most extreme case, I was playing around with player.modav dragonsouls and used my cheat-provided souls to buy levels 2 and 3 of the Throw Voice shout to see how it behaved at higher levels. When I exited the game, I noticed that I had received the achievement for unlocking all three words of a shout; this achievement was gained purely through blatant console cheating and Steam either didn't notice when my souls jumped from 0 to 100 in an instant or didn't care.

Solution 3:

There is absolutely nothing you can do in Skyrim that will disable your ability to receive Steam achievements, with the possible exception of playing with Steam in offline mode.

• I use the console quite frequently, both for trivial things like setting fov 90 and for actual cheats like using tcl to get up a mountain and tgm or tim to get back down. Even within the same session, achievements have continued to register normally. In one case, I was messing around with player.setav dragonsouls, unlocked the third tier of a shout, and accidentally got the corresponding achievement entirely through pure, blatant cheating which would have been trivially detectable if anyone had bothered to look.

• I play with hand-tweaked ini files, which has not prevented me from continuing to gain achievements.

• I play with several mods active, both graphical replacers and esp-based mods, which has not prevented me from continuing to gain achievements.

• Although I've not done anything achievement-worthy in offline mode myself, in another discussion about this, a poster responded to my possible exception by saying that, when he plays in offline mode, any achievements he may have earned while offline are awarded the next time he starts the game in online mode.