Steam Splits Achievements Into Base-Game and DLC Sets in Client Beta
Steam has started testing Achievement Sets in the Steam Client beta, a system that groups achievements into separate collections with separate completion math for the base game and DLC. The split means new DLC no longer lowers a finished base-game record, so a 100 percent base game stays at 100 percent when extra content ships. Engadget
Valve shipped the change as part of a Steam client beta update that alters how achievements work and how they are displayed. There are two kinds of collections: Base Game Achievement Sets and DLC Achievement Sets. Base-game achievements and their progress bars appear in blue, while DLC achievements and their bars appear in purple. Each set carries its own progress bar.
A DLC Achievement Set does not count toward overall game progress until the player has access to that DLC, so content you do not own and cannot launch stays out of the view. Developers must update their games to define the collections. Steam does not generate them automatically from existing achievement lists. Once a set is defined, earning all achievements in that collection adds a "set complete" trophy to the player's profile.
Completion is pinned in time. A set still shows 100 percent even if a developer later adds more achievements to that set. Steam lists Archiving and improved Completion as part of the beta, alongside the sets themselves, in its official Steam News announcement titled "Steam Achievement Sets Now in Beta". Steam News
The achievements page has been redesigned to host the new structure. It surfaces sets, per-set progress, and the color-coded split between base and DLC. The new page allows comparing progress with up to three friends, including rare achievements and completed sets. Steam described the work as a new feature aimed at improving the achievement experience on Steam. Steam Community
The broader context here is a shift from one global counter to smaller, scoped counters tied to what the player owns and can launch, like separate scorecards for the main game and each add-on. For players who track 100 percent runs, the base-game set becomes stable across the life of a title and DLC can grow without rewriting that history. For developers, there is curation work. They decide set boundaries and must ship an update to adopt the system, so coverage will be uneven during the beta and unowned DLC no longer clutters progress views.
In my view, that structure should make post-launch achievement design less punitive. Studios can add harder or longer-tail DLC goals without erasing a base-game perfect run, and can use per-set trophies as additional profile incentives. The open question is convention, how granular sets become, whether live-service titles use them for seasons, and how consistently studios backfill older catalogs. Those choices will determine how legible the system feels a year from now. The pattern will look familiar to enterprise readers, where state is scoped to what the user owns, versioned explicitly, and completed work is preserved.
