You 100%’d a game three years ago. Then a DLC dropped, five new achievements showed up and your perfect completion quietly turned into 94%. If you hunt achievements on Steam, you know that feeling, and Valve finally decided to do something about it.
The fix is called Achievement Sets. It’s the biggest change to Steam’s achievement system in years, and it’s live right now in the Steam Client beta.
Your 100% stays 100%
With Achievement Sets, developers can split a game’s achievements into separate groups. Think base game vs. DLC, or single-player vs. multiplayer.
Each set gets its own progress bar. Clear every achievement in a set and you get a “Set Complete” trophy that shows up on your Steam profile. And here’s the part that matters most: that completion sticks, even if new achievements get added to the set later.
That solves two long-running headaches. The first is the update or DLC that knocks you off 100% out of nowhere. The second is worse. Some achievements were tied to limited-time events or online modes that don’t exist anymore, which made finishing certain games flat-out impossible.
Blue is base game, purple is DLC
Valve is also color-coding things. Base game achievements show up in blue and DLC achievements show up in purple.
The quietly great detail is this one: achievements from DLC you don’t own won’t count toward your game’s overall completion percentage. No more getting dinged for content you never paid for.
Developers also get a new archive option. They can retire achievements that can no longer be earned, and players who already unlocked them keep them. Your bragging rights survive. The impossible grind disappears.
A new achievements page and a renamed tab
Steam is getting a redesigned achievements page too. It has better search, filters for locked and unlocked achievements, more detailed progress tracking and the option to compare yourself with up to three friends. (Pick those three carefully.)
Profiles are changing as well. The Perfect Games tab is now called Completed, and it covers both fully finished games and completed Achievement Sets.
Which games already support it
A handful of titles are already on board: Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, DREDGE, Forza Horizon 5, Crusader Kings III and Euro Truck Simulator 2.
There’s a catch. Right now you have to opt into the Steam Client Beta to use any of this, and whether more games adopt it depends on their developers. Valve hasn’t given a date for the stable release yet.
Still, if you’re the kind of person who keeps a spreadsheet of unfinished completions, this is the change you’ve been waiting on for a very long time. Somewhere out there, a Euro Truck Simulator 2 completionist just got their trophy back.
