Steam Achievement Sets Beta Now Live: How It Works

Valve opened the Steam Achievement Sets beta today, the company announced on Steam, letting developers split a game’s achievements into named collections so completion status stops breaking when new DLC, expansions or seasons ship. Steam is Valve’s PC game store and desktop client, where each player’s library of owned games and per-game achievements live. The beta is live now for players and developers, with Valve saying it will “continue making improvements during the beta” and that supported games will start showing the new layout as developers opt in.

Under the new system, developers define one or more sets inside a game. Each set has its own progress bar and a “set complete” trophy added to the player’s profile when every achievement in the group is unlocked. There are two flavors: Base Game sets (shown in blue) for achievements any player can earn, and DLC sets (shown in purple) for content that requires buying additional material. Players who don’t own the DLC won’t see those achievements counted in their overall game progress, which Valve says makes it easier to track what you’ve actually finished.

If a developer adds new achievements to a set later, your prior completion is preserved, so the “complete” trophy doesn’t disappear when an update drops. Sets can also be archived, which is useful for season passes or limited-time holiday achievements. Archived unlocks still show on the player’s profile without blocking others’ progress toward completing the active set.

The launch comes with an updated achievements page reachable from the web Games List and the Steam Library, plus filters for specific sets and for locked or unlocked achievements. Players can now compare progress with up to three friends, including rare achievements and DLC-set progress. The “Perfect Games” tab is renamed Completed and now shows both fully-finished games and games with completed achievement sets, and games played via Family Sharing now appear in the Games List.

Seventeen games have already opted in. The list spans Valve classics (Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2), strategy deep-cuts (Crusader Kings 3, Victoria 3) and racing sims (Forza Horizon 5, the two Truck Simulators). Cozy staples are in too: PowerWash Simulator, Dredge, Against the Storm and Age of Wonders 4. This year’s big launches are also in the list, including LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Flock Around and He is Coming. Modern Warfare 4 is already using sets at launch. Pixel Herald is covering its campaign as it ships.

We cross-referenced Valve’s Steam community announcement with the Eurogamer launch coverage and counted 17 games in the launch list: Against the Storm, Age of Wonders 4, American Truck Simulator, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Crusader Kings 3, 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. Achievement Sets is a quiet but practical change aimed at live-service and long-tail games, the kinds of titles that Pixel Herald readers are most likely to return to a year or two after launch. Two of the year’s biggest multi-platform launches are PEAK and GTA 6, the subjects of Pixel Herald’s PEAK and GTA 6 crossplay guides this week. See PEAK crossplay and GTA 6 crossplay for how each handles multiplayer. The big read-through is the Base Game / DLC split. It formalizes the long-standing Steam convention that DLC achievements are scoped to owners only. Now, players get a visible progress bar instead of buried hidden achievements. The friend-comparison expansion (rare achievements, completed sets, DLC progress) is the most visible new social hook. The renaming of Perfect Games to Completed is a small but real acknowledgement that “finished” on Steam is no longer just “no achievements left.” It now also means “finished every group an active developer has set up.”

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report