Valve has rolled out Achievement Sets in the Steam client beta, a major overhaul designed to fix one of the oldest grievances for completionist players. Live-service games and titles with post-launch DLC keep stacking new trophies forever, wiping that hard-earned 100% completion whenever fresh achievements land. This new system splits those endless lists into separate buckets: base game, DLC, seasons, and more, each tracked independently.
The old problem: a completionist nightmare
For years, Steam treated every achievement for a single game as one single pool. If you finished all base-game trophies and hit that satisfying 100%, any later patch, seasonal event or DLC adding new achievements instantly dropped your completion percentage.
It’s a huge pain for long-running live games. Seasonal events, battle passes, and expansions keep feeding new trophies into the same list. Over time, the achievement page becomes an unwieldy wall of entries, mixing mandatory campaign milestones, paid DLC challenges, and time-limited seasonal unlocks all together.
Players who just wanted to master the core game were punished for content they might never buy or get to play.
How Achievement Sets work
Achievement Sets let game developers split trophies into custom, self-contained groups. Each set gets its own progress bar and can earn its own “set complete” badge for your Steam profile.
Common set types include:
- Base Game Set: Core achievements for the main game, marked in blue.
- DLC Sets: Trophies tied to expansions or paid add-ons, shown in purple. Critically, these don’t count toward your base-game completion until you actually own that DLC content.
- Seasonal / Event Sets: For time-limited battle pass or seasonal challenges. Developers can even archive old seasonal sets once the event ends; players who already unlocked them keep the trophies, while new players can no longer earn them.
- Custom groupings: Devs can also split by single-player, multiplayer, classes, or chapters, whatever fits their game.
The actual way you unlock achievements doesn’t change. You still earn them by playing normally. The difference is purely in how Steam organises, displays and calculates your completion status. Finish the base set, and that 100% stays intact, no matter how many new seasonal or DLC achievements get added later.
What this changes for players
Completionists win
This is the big one. Your base-game 100% is now safe. New seasonal or DLC trophies live in their own separate buckets and cannot overwrite your base completion. You can choose to chase those extra sets or ignore them entirely.
Cleaner achievement browsing
Giant messy lists are gone. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of mixed trophies, you can jump straight to the base campaign, a specific DLC pack, or a past season. It’s far easier to see what you’ve completed and what you still want to tackle.
Archived seasonal achievements
For live service games with rotating events, devs can archive whole achievement sets once the season ends. If you missed the event, those trophies are no longer obtainable, but they remain visible on the profiles of players who unlocked them. This neatly handles limited-time rewards without permanently bloating the main list.
New profile bragging rights
Each completed Achievement Set adds its own completion marker to your Steam profile. It’s no longer just one single “100% game” badge; you can show off mastery of individual expansions and seasons separately.
Important caveats
This feature depends entirely on developers implementing it for their games. Existing titles will need an update from their studios to support Achievement Sets; the beta client alone won’t retroactively split up old achievement lists automatically.
At launch, a handful of games already support the beta system — including Portal 2, TF2, Left 4 Dead 2, Crusader Kings 3 and Forza Horizon 5 — with more studios adding support over time.
Also, this is still a Steam Client beta feature. Expect minor UI bugs and layout tweaks before it rolls out to all users.
Who benefits most
✅ Completionists: No more losing your hard-earned base-game 100% after a seasonal update.
✅ Live-service game fans: Seasons and battle pass achievements are neatly quarantined from core game progress.
✅ DLC buyers: You can track expansion progress separately without polluting your main campaign stats.
✅ Casual players: You can ignore seasonal trophy hunting and still feel finished with the main game.
Final thoughts
Achievement Sets is one of the most meaningful upgrades Steam’s achievement system has received in years. It solves the classic problem of perpetually growing trophy lists for games supported for years after launch.
Instead of one endless, ever-expanding pile of achievements, your progress is split into logical buckets. Base game, DLC and seasonal challenges now live in their own independent spaces, protecting that prized 100% status for players who just want to beat the main experience.
For completionists tired of seeing their perfect completion shattered by every new season or expansion, this beta can’t arrive soon enough.
