Valve has put Steam Achievement Sets into beta in the Steam client and a first group of 17 games, letting developers split achievements into sets, keep DLC achievements out of base-game completion and archive ones that can no longer be earned. Valve announced the feature in a Steam News post published late on 15 October 2026 UTC.
Separate sets for the base game and DLC
Developers decide how many sets a game has and what each covers, for example single-player and multiplayer. Players earn achievements as before, but each set gets its own progress bar, and completing one adds a “set complete” trophy to the player’s profile. If a developer later adds achievements to a completed set, Valve says, the player’s completion is preserved.
There are two kinds of set. Base-game sets, shown in blue, contain achievements any owner can earn. DLC sets, shown in purple, contain achievements that need paid add-on content, and Valve says these “are not included in your overall game progress until you have access to the content”. Players who finished the base game will no longer see their completion fall when an expansion adds achievements, which Valve’s post notes “can be hard to discover”. Japanese outlet AUTOMATON described this as the end of the long-standing problem of needing to buy DLC to reach 100%.
Archiving seasonal and time-limited achievements
Developers can also archive individual achievements or whole sets, which Valve suggests for seasonal or time-limited events. Archived achievements stay visible to players who unlocked them; for everyone else they are hidden and no longer block set or game completion. Valve’s guidance is direct: “Anytime an achievement can no longer be unlocked by users, it should be archived.” For live-service games, this is a cleaner way to retire event achievements than leaving them permanently unobtainable.
A new Achievements page and the 17 launch games
A new Achievements page, reachable from the Steam Library and the web Games List, shows overall progress, progress for each set and global stats. Search can filter by set and by locked or unlocked status, and players can compare progress with up to three friends. Because totals now depend on owned DLC and archived achievements, two friends may see different totals for the same game. The “Perfect Games” tab becomes “Completed”, and store and library pages show whether a game uses sets.
The launch games are 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. Players need to opt into the Steam Client Beta to see the changes, and Valve says the beta will keep changing based on feedback.
What studios with DLC and events have to decide
Valve pointed developers to a separate Steamworks post on the updated achievement system, and AUTOMATON reports that a new achievement editor was released the same day. We could not read that Steamworks post, so we cannot yet describe the editor’s rules or limits. Studios that ship DLC or seasonal events will need to decide which existing achievements belong in which set and which to archive, and those choices now directly affect the completion rate every player sees.