Valve has shipped the Steam Client update for November 11, and the headline in this Steam Deck news is a simple one: Achievement Sets are now out for everyone. The same patch also turns HDR back on for Remote Play on the OLED model, cleans up Big Picture Mode chat, and finally applies the Joystick Power Curve setting in gyro-to-joystick modes.
The client will download automatically. Here is what actually changed for handheld players, plus a couple of desktop Linux notes that come along with it.
Steam Deck news: Achievement Sets are out for everyone
When Valve first showed this feature in the Steam Client Beta, it was a new way to group a game’s trophies so you could track a base game separately from its DLC, or keep seasonal and retired items from wrecking a completion you had already earned. That beta is over. Valve says Achievement Sets and the new achievements page are now available to all Steam users.
Games can organise trophies into sets for the base game and for DLC. If a developer later adds new ones, or a new DLC with its own set, your completed sets stay completed and it will not break your game completion. Seasonal items, or ones you simply cannot get any more, can be archived. The achievements page has been revamped too, bringing together overall progress, individual set progress, Global Stats, search and filtering, and a comparison view with up to three friends.
We covered the idea when it was still in beta, in our earlier piece on how Achievement Sets work on the handheld. The difference today is that you no longer need the beta client to use it.
Remote Play HDR is back on the OLED model
Remote Play has had a substantial HDR pass. There is a new client setting with Automatic (on when the content is HDR), On (always on, which can also brighten SDR streams) and Off, plus a brightness slider in the streaming overlay. Valve says HDR is enabled again on Steam Deck OLED. There is also a new Display Style setting, so you can stretch or zoom the picture when the stream’s aspect ratio does not match your screen, and streaming from a PC on your local network should start faster.
Big Picture chat, the Quick Access Menu and a gyro fix
Big Picture Mode gets a few quality-of-life fixes that will feel familiar if you live in Gaming Mode. Game invites from friends now have their own widget above the chat box, instead of making you hunt for the message in the history, and group invites show in the group chat window rather than only in a one-to-one tab. Chat notifications are rolled up instead of firing a fresh toast for every message, and Valve says the Quick Access Menu should feel more responsive.
There is a genuine Steam Input fix for gyro players too. The Joystick Power Curve setting in Gyro to Joystick Camera and Gyro to Joystick Deflection modes was not actually being applied. Valve says if you changed that setting in the past, the response may feel different now, so reset it if you need to, then tune it again.
Framerate averages reach the Hardware Compatibility dialog
If you have already seen Valve’s new framerate averages on the Store, this client ships the same data a little further. The Hardware Compatibility dialog now shows the average framerate other handheld players get in a game, and the prompt to share anonymized framerate data now appears in the desktop client as well. We have already written up how those framerate averages work, including the histogram and what the numbers do and do not include.
A 64-bit Linux client, in a Steam Runtime container
On desktop Linux, the Steam client itself is now a 64-bit application, and it runs inside a Steam Runtime container. Valve’s notes say that is the same approach used by Steam games, and it should make the client more consistent across distributions.
That is the November 11 client in short: Achievement Sets for everyone, HDR Remote Play back on the OLED model, tidier Big Picture chat, a gyro curve that finally does what it says, and framerate data in one more place. If you want Valve’s full list, including the smaller stability and notification fixes, it is all in the official update notes. This Steam Deck news is a client-side release, not a new SteamOS build, but it is one of the more useful everyday patches the handheld has had in a while.
