Steam’s Achievement system has been massively upgraded

In recent years, Valve has been making a conscious effort to further improve its Steam game store, from visual and UX improvements to more substantive feature overhauls. Sitting somewhere in between the two, the PC gaming giant has now announced that it will be upgrading its long-standing achievements system with what they are calling ‘Steam Achievement Sets’.

Taking to their blog to make the announcement, Valve officially unveiled its new ‘Steam Achievement Sets’. Available right now for those on the beta branch, this updated system is designed to offer greater clarity when it comes to showcasing your earned achievements, with the team writing:

“Games today live longer than ever, continuing to receive updates through new DLC, expansions, and seasons. But achievements added with new game content can be hard to discover and can accidentally break the completion status of players who have already finished the game. We have designed Achievement Sets to help address these types of issues.”

In essence, developers will now have the ability to split their games’ achievements into different ‘sets’ which can be independently tracked and are made visually distinct from one another. Based on the wording, it appears as though these categories will be created and dictated by the devs themselves, allowing for all sorts of breakdowns including but not limited to:

• Single-player Achievements
• Multiplayer Achievements
• Base Game Achievements
• DLC Achievements
• Seasonal Achievements

This should not only allow for easier navigation overall, but will also mean that users can still show off their 100% completion without being diluted by post-launch DLC and the like.

In addition to this new system, Steam’s Achievements page has also received its own upgrades, with a cleaner UX, new toggles, additional filters and much more.

While Steam still lacks a Platinum Trophy (or a Mythic Achievement) equivalent, this new categorisation of its achievements is arguably superior to all other platforms. Hopefully the likes of Sony and Xbox take inspiration for their own platforms.

KitGuru says: What do you think of the idea of Achievement Sets? Are you bothered by your 100% completions being diluted by DLC? What other aspects of Steam could still be improved? Let us know down below.