Steam Beta for October 15 brings a 64bit Linux client, Achievement Sets and more

16 Oct 2026 at 6:48 am UTC
By Liam Squires-Hand

Another big new Steam Beta release for all platforms has arrived - bringing with it a 64bit Linux client, and a fancy Achievement Sets system.

For the new Achievement Sets, Valve explains:

"This beta enables developers to group their game's related achievements together in collections we are calling Achievement Sets. Devs can specify the number of sets and the purpose of each to match their game's specific needs. You can imagine one game grouping its achievements into single-player and multiplayer sets, or another into 8 class-based sets.

In games that support sets, you still unlock achievements by playing the game as usual. But when you browse what you have unlocked afterward, Steam will break the long list of game achievements into the developer-created sets, making it easier to see what you have completed and to find other related achievements you can unlock next.
Each Achievement Set also has its own progress bar showing how far along you are in that area. Once you have unlocked every achievement in a set, Steam will commemorate the moment and add a "set complete" trophy to your profile. If new achievements are later added to the set, your completion is preserved.

As a game grows, developers can create new sets to hold achievements for the added content. These new sets make it easy for returning players to see what new things they can unlock, while also preserving their prior completion status until they play again."

Portal 2 for example has them nicely split between single-player and co-op:

It upgrades the system for DLC too, separating them from the main game. Plus developers can do special seasonal achievements as well.

And there's a whole new look for the main game achievements page:

As for the Steam Client Beta for October 15th. The main changes are below.

Key Changes

General

• Notifications settings layout has been changed to be easier to work with at all window sizes.
• Fixed multiple edge cases that could cause memory leaks in game streaming and controller code.
• Multiple general stability improvements and fixes for rare crashes affecting small numbers of users.
• Fixed an error displaying dates for users in British Columbia.

Library

• Improved offline support for the activity feed and fixed cases where it could previously skip loading some events.

Linux

• The Steam client is now a 64bit application.
• The Steam client now runs inside a Steam Runtime container.
  • This will help the Steam client provide a more consistent experience across multiple distributions. This is the same technology used by Steam games.
• Fixed a case where Steam updater UI would fail to show for some users.

Remote Play

• Added a "Display Style" setting to allow stretching and zooming when the stream is a different aspect ratio than the client display.

Steam Controller Firmware

• Fixed an issue where shutting down a controller while docked to the puck could cause it to turn back on.

Accessibility

• In Big Picture Mode, background art will appear on the home screen when High Contrast is enabled.

Really great to see the Linux side of things improve so much - hopefully this will keep Steam on Linux running nicely long into the future.

Steam Deck / Steam Machine have the same fixes and improvements.

🌐 External Sources: store.steampowered.com, steamcommunity.com Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Beta, Misc, Steam, Valve 32 Likes All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.