What Steam achievement sets are and who can use them now
Steam achievement sets are a new way for a game to organise its achievements, and as of this week they are live in the Steam client beta. A developer can group a game's achievements into sets, each with its own progress bar, and Steam adds a set complete trophy to your profile when you unlock everything in one. Valve's own announcement is titled "Steam Achievement Sets Now in Beta," and the press reports on it are dated October 15 and 16, 2026.
It is opt-in on both sides. Players need to join the Steam client beta to see the new achievements page, and only 17 games have added sets so far, per PCGamesN. Valve has not given a general release date. Mixed News reports that no game update or SDK update is required for developers, and that existing achievement API names and unlock calls keep working, so adoption does not depend on patching games.
The problem Valve is fixing: DLC that breaks 100% completion
Anyone who has chased full completion knows the pain. You finish every achievement, then the developer ships an expansion or a seasonal event and your 100% is gone. Mixed News summarises Valve's reasoning as achievements added with new content being hard to discover and able to break the completion status of players who already finished the game. Sets are the structural answer: completion is tied to a set, so adding a new one does not undo the old one.
That is a quiet but real change in what a completion badge means. Under the old model, a single flat list meant a perfect game was a moving target for live-service titles. Under sets, you can finish the base game, finish the DLC later, and have both recorded separately. Valve's description is that "if new achievements are later added to the set, your completion is preserved."
“If new achievements are later added to the set, your completion is preserved.”
How base-game and DLC sets look and count
Valve uses colour to separate them. According to PCGamesN, base-game achievements appear in blue and DLC achievements in purple. DLC achievements do not count toward your overall progress until you actually own the add-on, so a game you finished does not suddenly show 60% because an expansion exists that you never bought. Developers can also create finer categories, for example by game mode or by individual expansion.
TBreak adds that Valve suggests splitting single-player from multiplayer or grouping by character class, and that developers can create new sets for expansions or updates. Mixed News reports that developer-only sets stay hidden from players and that DLC sets stay hidden until the DLC ships. Players still unlock achievements by playing normally. Sets change how progress is organised and displayed, not how anything is earned.
Archiving: retiring achievements you can no longer earn
The most consequential feature is archiving. Developers can archive a single achievement or a whole set once it can no longer be unlocked, which covers season-based content and time-limited holiday events. Valve's wording, as quoted by PCGamesN, is that "archived achievements won't show up on the profile pages of users who missed the unlock," and they also will not block progress toward completing a set or the game.
Players who did earn an archived achievement keep it on their profile. That makes archived items a kind of permanent badge for people who were there, while no longer punishing latecomers. Mixed News notes that Valve says any achievement that can no longer be unlocked should be archived. The open question is how studios use it: archiving a hard-to-get achievement that is still technically obtainable would blunt its meaning, and Valve has not published a policy beyond that guidance.
The rebuilt achievements page, friend comparison and Completed tab
The achievements page now shows progress per set and per achievement. Global stats are a toggle rather than the default view, and search can filter by set and by locked or unlocked status, according to Mixed News. You can compare progress against up to three friends. Because totals count only the achievements each player can earn, based on owned add-ons and archived items, two friends can see different percentages for the same game.
Two profile changes matter for collectors. The Perfect Games tab becomes Completed, and it can now show finished sets as well as fully completed games. Finished sets can be added to your Completionist Showcase, and games played through Family Sharing are recognised. If you curate your profile, this is where the visible change lands first.
Which games have sets, and what developers got
PCGamesN lists the 17 games Valve named: Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Forza Horizon 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, both PowerWash Simulator games, Dredge, Against the Storm, Flock Around, Lego Batman, He Is Coming, Crusader Kings 3, Age of Wonders 4 and Victoria 3. Several are long-running games with years of added content, which is exactly where flat lists hurt most.
On the tooling side, Mixed News says Valve rebuilt the Steamworks achievement editor with CSV and image bulk import and export, a Bulk Move tool, greyscale locked-icon generation and checks for missing localized text. That lowers the cost of reorganising a catalogue of achievements, which is the real barrier to adoption for a studio with hundreds of them.
How to join the beta and what to watch next
To try it, opt into the Steam client beta by following the steps in Valve's announcement, then open the achievements page of a supported game. Valve's announcement points to a feedback thread in the Steam Client Beta group on the Steam community, where players can report problems. We could not read the body of Valve's post for this report, so the details above come from the press coverage cited below, which agree with each other on every point stated.
What to watch is straightforward. Does Valve set a date for a general release? Do more large catalogues join, and do publishers archive sparingly? None of that is answered yet. For now, the safe reading is that completion tracking is getting fairer to players of games that keep growing.
Frequently asked
What are Steam achievement sets?
Steam achievement sets let developers group a game's achievements into collections, each with its own progress bar and a set complete trophy when finished. Base-game sets show in blue and DLC sets in purple. Because completion is tied to a set, adding new achievements later does not undo a finished one. The feature entered the Steam client beta this week, with 17 games supported, according to reports on Valve's announcement.
How do I get Steam achievement sets?
Opt into the Steam client beta by following the steps in Valve's announcement, then open the achievements page of a supported game. Only players in the beta can see the feature for now, and only 17 games have added sets so far, including Portal 2, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2. Valve has not announced a general release date, and it has a feedback thread in the Steam Client Beta group for bug reports.
Will DLC still break my 100% completion on Steam?
Under sets, it should not. DLC achievements live in their own purple sets and do not count toward your overall progress until you own the add-on. If a developer adds achievements to a set you already finished, Valve says your completion is preserved. Games that have not adopted sets still use the old flat list, so the protection only applies to the 17 supported games in the beta so far.
What does archiving an achievement mean on Steam?
Archiving lets a developer retire an achievement or whole set that can no longer be unlocked, such as a seasonal or time-limited event. Per Valve, as quoted by PCGamesN, archived achievements will not show on the profile pages of users who missed the unlock and will not block progress toward completing a set or game. Players who earned them keep them on their profile, so archived items stay as a record of having been there.
Can I compare Steam achievements with friends?
Yes. The rebuilt achievements page lets you compare progress with up to three friends. Totals count only the achievements each player can earn, based on owned add-ons and archived items, so two people can see different percentages for the same game. Games played through Family Sharing are now recognised in the Games List, and finished sets can be added to your Completionist Showcase.
Which games support Steam achievement sets?
PCGamesN lists 17 games: Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Forza Horizon 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, both PowerWash Simulator games, Dredge, Against the Storm, Flock Around, Lego Batman, He Is Coming, Crusader Kings 3, Age of Wonders 4 and Victoria 3. More are expected as developers reorganise their achievements, since no game update is required.