Steam introduces Achievement Sets: DLC should no longer ruin 100 per cent records
Valve is testing a reorganisation of Steam achievements: developers can group them into sets and archive unobtainable ones. 17 games are already taking part.
Archive image · Photo: Tim Eulitz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Valve is overhauling Steam’s achievement system. With the new Achievement Sets, currently in beta, developers can split a game’s achievements into groups – for example by base game, expansions, game modes or seasonal content, or by single-player and multiplayer. Each set gets its own progress bar; anyone who unlocks every achievement in a set receives a trophy on their profile, which remains even if new achievements are added later. This is meant to stop new add-on content from wiping out a game’s completion status.
Developers can also archive individual achievements or entire sets, for instance when multiplayer servers have been shut down. Archived achievements then no longer block the path to 100 per cent. Steam says that any achievement that can no longer be unlocked by users should be archived. According to VGC, this also makes time-limited achievements, such as for holidays, possible.
At launch, 17 games are using the sets, including Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, DREDGE, PowerWash Simulator, Forza Horizon 5 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. According to Windows Central, there is criticism of the profile statistics: the average completion rate is dropped and completed sets are counted instead of completed games – which distorts the figures for titles such as Team Fortress 2 with 16 sets and 520 achievements.