Goodbye 32-Bit Linux and DLC Completion Resets: Inside Valve's Major Steam Client Update
One of the longest-standing technical holdovers in Linux gaming has officially come to an end. With its November update now rolling out to the Stable channel, Valve has transitioned the Linux desktop Steam client to a native 64-bit architecture while launching Steam Achievement Sets for all users, as detailed in the official Steam Client Update patch notes published by Valve.
Goodbye 32-Bit Dependencies: The 64-Bit Linux Client Runs in a Steam Runtime Container
Even after Valve migrated its Windows and macOS clients to 64-bit, the core Linux desktop client remained a legacy 32-bit (i386) binary for more than a decade. That forced users on modern 64-bit distributions to maintain bulky 32-bit multilib host libraries just to launch the storefront and library interface.
Now rebuilt as a native 64-bit application, the Linux Steam client runs directly inside a dedicated Steam Runtime container. This leverages the exact same containerization technology that Valve has used for years to isolate and run Steam games reliably across diverse operating systems.
Running the client inside the container ensures a consistent experience across Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora, Debian, and SteamOS while preventing host library updates from breaking the launcher. The architectural upgrade arrives right as Linux approaches the historic 4% market share milestone on Steam.
Alongside the 64-bit transition, the Linux update introduces a restyled Steam updater UI and resolves a bug that previously prevented the updater window from appearing for some users. Valve also fixed a client crash when resuming from system suspend and patched a lobby creation crash affecting titles that rely on the ISteamNetworking interface, such as Sons of the Forest.
Steam Achievement Sets: DLC Expansions and Seasonal Events No Longer Break Your 100%
The second headline addition now live for everyone is Steam Achievement Sets, a ground-up overhaul of how game objectives are grouped, tracked, and displayed. Previously, whenever a developer added new achievements through a paid expansion or post-launch update, players who had already perfected the game lost their 100% completion status overnight.
Developers can now organize a title's objectives into distinct collections, each featuring its own progress bar and a dedicated "set complete" profile trophy:
- Base Game Achievement Sets (Blue): These hold achievements available to everyone who owns the core game, allowing studios to split objectives by single-player campaign, co-op modes, or character classes. Once a set is completed, its trophy remains permanently unlocked even if new sets are added later.
- DLC Achievement Sets (Purple): Objectives tied to paid expansions are grouped into separate DLC sets. They are excluded from your overall game progress until you actually own the add-on content, ensuring unowned DLC never ruins your base game completion.
- Archiving Seasonal and Retired Achievements: Studios can now archive time-limited holiday challenges or retired multiplayer objectives. Players who unlocked them keep them on their profile, while archived achievements are hidden from players who missed the window so they never block 100% completion.
On user profiles, the "Perfect Games" tab has been renamed "Completed" and expanded to showcase both fully completed titles and games with completed achievement sets, all of which can be featured in the Completionist Showcase. The revamped Achievements page adds a direct toggle for Global Stats, set-based search filters, and side-by-side comparison with up to three friends at once, including playtime and progress earned through Family Sharing.
At launch, 17 games already support Achievement Sets: Against the Storm, Age of Wonders 4, American Truck Simulator, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Crusader Kings III, DREDGE, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Forza Horizon 5, Flock Around, He is Coming, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, PowerWash Simulator, PowerWash Simulator 2, Team Fortress 2, and Victoria 3.
Faster Cold Starts, Steam Deck Framerate Histograms, and PipeWire HDR Capture
Under the hood, Valve has shipped a second round of cold-start performance improvements for the desktop client alongside full support for GameInput v4 in Steam Input. Big Picture Mode also receives a dedicated game invite widget above the chat entry box and rolls up rapid friend chat notifications instead of firing repetitive two-second toast alerts.
On store pages and in the Library, the Hardware Compatibility dialog now displays the average framerate players get on Steam Deck across thousands of tested titles, complete with an expandable framerate histogram. Anonymized samples are filtered to default frame limits (90 FPS on Steam Deck OLED and 60 FPS on Steam Deck LCD), making it easy to spot stuttering or the classic 90-to-45 FPS VSync drop when a game misses its refresh target.
Finally, Remote Play receives a major HDR revamp: HDR capture is now supported on desktop Linux via PipeWire and when streaming from macOS, HDR streaming is re-enabled on Steam Deck OLED, and support is extended to smartphones running Android 15 and newer via the beta Steam Link app.
Check Steam Deck OLED Availability on Amazon→
My Take
Splitting base game achievements from paid DLC expansions and letting studios archive unobtainable seasonal challenges is the exact cleanup completionists have been asking Valve to deliver for a decade. PlayStation solved this years ago by separating add-on trophy lists from the base Platinum, and keeping your 100% badge intact when a publisher drops an expansion years later is long-overdue common sense.
Arthur "Heimdall" Hardware Perspective: From a systems standpoint, wrapping the native 64-bit Linux client inside the Steam Runtime container finally eliminates the headache of maintaining legacy i386 host packages on rolling-release distros. Even better is the new Steam Deck framerate histogram: by exposing the exact 90 FPS to 45 FPS VSync step-down on the 90Hz OLED panel when a game dips below target, Valve gives players real frame-pacing transparency that tells you far more than a simple Verified badge ever could.
SEO consultant for over 20 years and digital entrepreneur, Charles "Grimtag" is the founder of Pro-Gamer.gg, Retrocharting.com, and Gamescharting.com. A competitive gamer, streamer, and retro game collector, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years, notably as a consultant for leading game price comparison platforms. Passionate about real-time performance data and gaming technology, he analyzes competitive esports, gaming hardware benchmarks, and creator workflows on Pro-Gamer.gg with an authentic player perspective.
