Steam Beta Adds Achievement Sets, So DLC No Longer Ruins Your Completion Rate

Valve has added Achievement Sets to the Steam Client Beta, giving developers a way to keep DLC and seasonal achievements from wrecking a player's completion record. The feature went live on October 15 and is available only to players who opt into the beta client (The Escapist, Tbreak).

The problem it fixes

Until now, a game's achievements sat in one flat list. Add a paid expansion with 20 new achievements and a player who had finished the base game suddenly dropped to a lower completion percentage. Limited-time events were worse, because achievements tied to a past holiday could never be earned by anyone who joined later.

Valve describes the system as "a new way to organize, track, and complete a game's achievements." Developers define sets, and completed sets stay completed when new sets are added later.

How the sets work

Feature	How it works
Base Game sets (blue)	Own progress bar; a "set complete" trophy stays on your profile
DLC sets (purple)	Kept out of overall progress until you own the DLC; Steam will not unlock them without ownership
Archiving	Developers can archive single achievements or whole sets; archived items stay on profiles of players who earned them and stop counting for everyone else
Setup	Configured in Steamworks, no game or SDK update needed
Games without sets	Unchanged; the old flat list stays

The DLC ownership rule also affects third-party achievement-manager tools, since Steam now refuses to unlock DLC-set achievements for players who do not own that DLC (Games.gg). One outlet says games can define up to 40 sets; other coverage does not mention a cap.

Archiving for seasonal content

Valve suggests archiving for seasonal events and limited-time challenges, such as a "Halloween Event Achievements" set. It could also cover achievements tied to shut-down multiplayer servers or retired modes. Late arrivals are no longer penalised for content that is gone, while players who earned those achievements keep them.

A redesigned achievements page

The beta also redesigns the achievements page: players can compare progress with up to three friends at once, global statistics sit behind a toggle, and new filters cover sets and locked or unlocked achievements. The same beta build reportedly includes unrelated changes, such as a 64-bit Linux client running in the Steam Runtime container and fixes for Remote Play and Steam Controller firmware.

Which games already use it

Seventeen games support Achievement Sets at launch: Against the Storm, Age of Wonders 4, American Truck Simulator, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Crusader Kings III, DREDGE, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Forza Horizon 5, Flock Around, He is Coming, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, PowerWash Simulator, PowerWash Simulator 2, Team Fortress 2 and Victoria 3.

What is still open

Valve has not announced when the feature reaches the stable Steam client, or whether it will push developers to convert older games. The benefit depends entirely on developer uptake: studios with years of DLC must sort achievements into sets by hand, and games that never update keep the old behaviour.

What to watch next

A stable-client release date, which major games adopt sets next, and how third-party completion-tracking sites handle the new structure.

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