I turned on an accessibility setting and my friends started treating the win as fake

A single-player action game I had been excited about includes an option that makes rapid button presses work as a hold. I turned it on during the first hour because repeated tapping makes my hand ache. The setting does not choose attacks or move the character. It changes one physical input I find uncomfortable.

I mentioned it in our group chat after beating a boss that had stopped two of my friends. I expected the usual jokes about my chaotic play style. Instead, one friend said, “Oh, you used assist mode. That explains it.”

Another added an asterisk emoji beside my screenshot. They were probably teasing, but the conversation kept returning to whether the fight “counted.” One friend sent a clip of himself doing it with default controls. Someone else asked which other settings I had changed, as if I had submitted a suspicious tax return.

I laughed along at first. Then I noticed I was considering turning the option off before the next boss even though my hand had hurt during the one session I tried that. I had taken a feature designed to let me play comfortably and converted it into a character test nobody had asked me to take.

I do understand why people compare challenge runs. Restrictions can be part of the fun, and a person who beats a game without taking damage has done something different from a normal completion. But none of us had agreed we were competing under identical rules. We were sharing progress in a private chat. Until I disclosed the setting, nobody had questioned whether my wins were legitimate.

I told the friend who made the first comment that the joke was getting old. He said I was making it serious and that everyone knows single-player games are for playing however you want. That answer would be more convincing if the asterisk had disappeared.

Would you stop posting progress, push back more directly, or treat this as harmless trash talk? I do not need them to applaud every boss fight. I do want to keep the setting on without feeling that I must attach a footnote to anything I accomplish. Where is the line between comparing different challenges and quietly ranking which bodies are allowed to claim a win?