A 100% that drops to 87%
Anyone who’s ever chased a perfect Steam profile knows the feeling: you finish a game, a DLC lands a year later, and your shiny 100% quietly drops to 87%. Valve’s answer is Achievement Sets, a new way of grouping achievements that went into the Steam Client beta on October 15, US time.
Developers can now split a game’s list into collections that suit it, such as single-player and multiplayer, or one set per character class. Each set gets its own progress bar, and finishing one puts a “set complete” trophy on your profile. Crucially, Valve says in its announcement that if new achievements are later added to a set, “your completion is preserved.”
DLC achievements no longer count against you until you own the DLC
There are two kinds of set. Base Game sets, shown in blue, hold achievements every player can earn. DLC sets, shown in purple, hold the ones locked behind paid content, and they aren’t counted in your overall progress until you actually own that DLC.
That’s the fix completionists have wanted for years. A base game you finished stays finished, and the expansion becomes its own checklist rather than a stain on the old one.
Developers can retrofit old games without shipping a patch
The most important line is in Valve’s developer post: “You don’t need to update your game or the Steamworks SDK” to use sets. Valve says existing achievements and unlock code keep working, and sets are configured entirely in Steamworks, its developer back end. The launch list already includes games as old as Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2.
The rest of the first wave is a decent spread: Against the Storm, Age of Wonders 4, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Crusader Kings III, Victoria 3, DREDGE, Forza Horizon 5, Flock Around, He is Coming, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and both PowerWash Simulator games. Because nothing needs patching, we’d expect that list to grow quickly. Paradox-style games with a decade of DLC are the obvious candidates.
Seasonal achievements are the part we’re wary of
Valve is also letting developers archive individual achievements or whole sets, so they can run time-limited holiday or seasonal ones. If you unlocked one, it stays on your profile. If you missed it, it won’t show up on your profile, and it won’t block your progress toward completing a set or game.
Valve has designed that carefully, and missing a Halloween event won’t cost you a perfect game. Still, “only available this season” is a classic live-service lever, and achievement hunters are exactly the people it works on. We’d rather developers used archiving to tidy up achievements that can no longer be earned, which Valve says should always be archived, than to manufacture another reason to log in every week.
A rebuilt achievements page comes with it
Sets come with a new achievements page, reachable from your Games List on the web and from games in your Library. Global unlock percentages are now a toggle on the same page, search can filter by set or by locked and unlocked achievements, and you can compare progress with up to three friends at once.
- The Perfect Games tab is now called Completed, and includes games where you’ve finished a set.
- Games with completed sets can go in the Completionist Showcase on your profile.
- Games played through Family Sharing now show up in your Games List and count for friend comparisons.
- Store and Library pages show whether a game uses achievement sets.
Valve’s timing is good. Steam just set another concurrent-user record, and Epic has been talking up its rebuilt launcher. Small quality-of-life wins like this are where Steam’s lead keeps quietly growing.
To try it now you’ll need to opt into the Steam Client beta, which Valve’s support page walks through. It’s a beta, so if something misbehaves afterwards, you can switch back to the stable client, and verifying your game files can rule out a damaged install.
