Steam Achievement Sets Could Fix DLC Completion

Steam has quietly changed something that completionists have been asking about for years.

A game can be finished. Every achievement can be unlocked. That satisfying 100% can sit on your profile for months.

Then an expansion arrives.

Suddenly, the same game has more achievements, and your perfect completion percentage can become unfinished again.

Valve’s new Achievement Sets are designed to deal with exactly that problem. The feature is now being tested through the Steam Client beta, giving developers a way to separate achievements into different groups instead of treating every unlock as part of one giant list.

For players who care about completion, this could be a much bigger change than it first appears.

Quick Summary

Steam is beta testing Achievement Sets.

Developers can divide achievements into separate collections.

Base-game and DLC achievements can have their own sets.

Each set gets its own progress tracking.

Completing a set gives a Set Complete trophy on your profile.

Adding achievements later does not erase completion of an already-finished set.

Seasonal content can also be handled separately and archived.

The feature currently requires Steam’s beta client and developer support.

The Problem With Steam’s Old Achievement System

Steam achievements have traditionally treated a game’s achievement list as one large collection.

That worked reasonably well when games launched, received a few patches, and eventually stopped growing.

Modern games don’t work that way anymore.

Expansions, character packs, new modes and seasonal events can keep adding achievements long after the original release. For someone who completed the base game, that creates an awkward situation: the game was genuinely finished, but the platform can make that completion look incomplete after new content arrives.

Achievement Sets change the structure instead of asking players to simply accept it.

Base Game and DLC Can Finally Be Separated

One of the most useful parts of the system is the distinction between Base Game Achievement Sets and DLC Achievement Sets.

A developer can place achievements earned through the main game into one set while putting achievements tied to additional content into another.

That means finishing the base game doesn’t have to depend on whether you own every expansion.

Steam’s new system separates DLC achievements from the base game’s overall progress until the player has access to the relevant content.

For completionists, that is the important part.

You can finish what you actually own without having your progress tangled together with content you haven’t played.

100% Completion Can Stay Completed

There is another change that may matter even more.

Each Achievement Set has its own progress bar. Once every achievement in that set has been unlocked, Steam awards a Set Complete trophy on the player’s profile.

If the developer later adds achievements to that completed set, Steam preserves the previous completion status.

That creates a much cleaner distinction between finishing a game and continuing to play new content.

Imagine completing every achievement in a game’s original campaign.

Months later, a large expansion arrives with another 30 achievements.

Under the new system, those achievements can live in their own set rather than turning your original accomplishment into an unfinished checklist.

For players who enjoy completion for the sense of closure, that matters.

Seasonal Achievements Become Less Messy

Achievement Sets aren’t limited to DLC.

Developers can create sets around different purposes, meaning a game could potentially separate achievements for things such as multiplayer, character classes or other parts of its content.

Seasonal content is particularly interesting.

Games increasingly run limited-time events, and achievements connected to those events can create another problem for completionists. Valve’s new system includes support for archiving sets, giving developers a way to handle seasonal or no-longer-available content without leaving an impossible target hanging over a player’s completion record.

That could become increasingly important as live-service games continue to evolve.

Steam’s Achievement Page Is Getting More Useful

Achievement Sets aren’t only about percentages.

Steam is also changing how achievements are displayed.

Instead of one enormous list, supported games can show separate collections with their own progress. Players can see what they have completed and identify which achievements belong together.

That makes achievement hunting easier to understand.

A 72% completion figure doesn’t tell you much on its own. A base-game set sitting at 100%, with a separate DLC set at 18%, tells a much clearer story.

Developers Still Control the Structure

There is an important limitation.

Achievement Sets are not automatically being applied to every Steam game.

Developers decide how their achievements are organized, and the feature is currently being tested in beta. A growing selection of games already supports the system, but the wider rollout depends on developers adopting it.

That means the quality of the experience could vary from game to game.

A well-organized set structure could make achievement hunting significantly clearer. Poorly divided sets could simply create more categories without solving the underlying confusion.

Valve has provided the framework. Developers will determine how useful it becomes.

Why Achievement Sets Matter More Than They Look

This isn’t really about making achievements prettier.

It is about recognizing that games are no longer finished products in the traditional sense.

A game can launch with 50 achievements, receive an expansion a year later, add a seasonal event after that, and continue changing for years.

The old system treated all of those additions as one growing checklist.

Achievement Sets give Steam a way to acknowledge that a game’s life can have different chapters.

For completionists, that could mean something simple but important:

Finishing the game can finally mean finishing the game you actually played.

Valve is still testing the feature, so its final form and wider adoption remain to be seen. But if developers embrace it, Achievement Sets could quietly become one of Steam’s most useful quality-of-life changes for players who care about 100% completion.

FAQ

What are Steam Achievement Sets?

Achievement Sets are groups that let developers organize a game’s achievements into separate collections with individual progress tracking.

Do DLC achievements count toward base-game completion?

Under the new system, DLC achievements can be placed in separate sets and are not included in overall progress until the player has access to that content.