Steam tests Achievement Sets to fix DLC completion confusion
Steam is testing Achievement Sets, grouping DLC and seasonal goals so players can see what counts towards the games they actually own.
Valve has started testing Steam Achievement Sets, a change designed to make achievement completion easier to understand when a game has expansions or time-limited challenges. The feature is available through the Steam client beta and currently works only with games that support it. 1
How Steam Achievement Sets work
Achievement Sets group an existing game's achievements into clearer categories. Valve's example is Portal 2, where single-player and co-operative achievements can be separated rather than presented as one undifferentiated list. Developers can also create DLC categories, making it clearer which goals require an expansion.
The change also alters how completion is counted. Players who do not own a game's DLC will not have those DLC achievements included in the game's overall completion rate. That means a player can aim for 100 per cent of the content they actually own without an expansion quietly changing the target later. DLC achievements receive a different colour in the interface, so the distinction should be visible rather than hidden in a submenu.
Valve is also introducing an Achievement Archive. Developers can use it for seasonal or otherwise time-limited achievements. Players who already unlocked an archived achievement keep it on their profile, while players who missed it will no longer see it as an obstacle to completing the active set. The system therefore preserves older records without turning a discontinued event into a permanent mark against completion.
Achievement Sets can be viewed from a player's Steam Library and from individual web store pages. Valve says the interface adds search and filtering, shows completion for each category and allows comparisons with up to three friends. The first supported games include Against the Storm, Age of Wonders 4, DREDGE, Portal 2, PowerWash Simulator 2, Team Fortress 2 and Victoria 3, although the full list is still being expanded. 1
Our opinion
This is a modest but genuinely useful correction to one of Steam's messier bits of interface design. DLC achievements should never make a base-game completion target feel like it moved after the finish line, and archived seasonal goals are a sensible way to preserve history without punishing players for missing a window that has closed. The beta's value will depend on developers adopting the system consistently, but the underlying idea is much fairer than treating every achievement as part of one fixed pile.