While described in further detail in Rule #1 below, achievement hunters and/or those seeking to improve their AGCR are hereby warned:

**As soon as you earn even 1 achievement in a game, that game will be part of your calculation forever.**

Idling for cards is normally fine, just do not start achieving in a game that you don't intend to finish.

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AGCR is not:

• A total of all your earned achievements divided by the total number of possible achievements in all of the games you own.
  
• The number of games that you've 100% completed (a.k.a. Perfect Games) divided by the total number of games in your library.

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If you're not of the OCD sort trying to figure out how to calculate this number for yourself... congratulations! You're all set. Thanks for stopping by.

So, an average of percentages?

How does that work?

A simple example creates a hypothetical Steam User X with only two games. One game has 1,629 achievements; the other game with only 10. In this case, X has 1629/1629 achievements in the first game and 5/10 in the other.

This gives User X a 100% and a 50% for the total library. Again, without regard to the number of achievements in each game, User X would show an AGCR of 75%. ((100 + 50) / 2)

In a more complicated and slightly more realistic example, Steam User Y has three games. Y's achievements for these three are 3/10 (30%), 12/20 (60%) and 25/50 (50%).

Averaging the percentages ((30 + 60 + 50) / 3), User Y is left with an AGCR of 46.66667%. Y's Achievement Showcase would list this number as 46%, as the calculation is always rounded down to the next whole percent. We wouldn't want someone with 99.5% of their games done to show as 100% now would we?







And finally, User Z has four games: 27/48 (56.25%), 63/64 (98.4735%), 4/9 (44.44..%), 263/360 (73.055..%). The averaging of percentages includes the exact number; there is *no rounding of any kind* when you are making your calculation. Only the showcase rounds down when it wants to display its final value to you.

In this example, (.5625 + .984735 + .4444... + .7305555...) / 4 = .68055875 or 68% as displayed by the showcase. (Again, note that the last two percentages are literally the fractions '4/9' and '263/360' with 4s and 5s repeating in their respective decimals. Let your calcuator or spreadsheet use the unrounded numbers in the final calculation.)

Rounding early, (56% + 98% + 44% + 73%) / 4 = .6775, which would display as 67%. The two results are close enough that the showcase often may not display an incorrect value... something worth remembering throughout all of the rules below honestly.


Speaking of rounding down, as of June 18, 2016, I am now reasonably certain that AGCR is calculated to at least 5 decimal places. After stringing a few specific achievements together for the sake of math, I was able to raise my calculation to 55.99998%. Steam still did not round this up as my showcase displayed as 55%.

Disclaimer! I double checked every number possible and was able to come to this result consistently. Still, there is always a possibility for error or unknown variable. The best course of action is always to be skeptical and verify everything for yourself before regarding anything as fact. Do it for science!

Now, what if User X's perfect game with 1629/1629 achievements earned comes out with DLC that increases the count to, say, 1746 achievements. In this case, X's average will be lowered from 100% to a 93.3% (1629/1746) as soon as the new content is added.

**Steam will count all available achievements, regardless of whether or not you own all of the game's content. Therefore, your individual game calculations must follow suit**.

Any additions or changes should be easily noted from either your profile or library. If you appear to have *lost* a perfect game from your showcase, game updates or new DLC are often the cause.

From a thrifty achievement hunter's angle, if you plan to buy a game that has, or will have, achievements exclusive to DLC, completing the base game on its own will not net you a Perfect Game. That glorious 100% will require every achievement associated with the game and all of its content.

And now, armed with knowledge and the ability to average a set a numbers, you're almost ready to start turning raw data on a spreadsheet into your very own AGCR like the one below!

















"But wait. How many of my games go into the calculated average?", you ask. "Everything currently in my library? Just the ones that I've started? Or installed? What if a game just doesn't have any achievements?"

Worry not, dear reader. The following rules should answer just about any question you may have in determining which games will be counted... and which ones will not!

If you've earned at least 1 achievement in a game* that was never free on the Steam Storefront**, the game's percentage is counting in the calculation. Simple.

Conversely, and to be perfectly clear, if you've never earned any achievements for a game, it is NOT counting against you.

If the game itself just doesn't have any achievements, it's not counting as a 0% against your AGCR.

In other words, achievement hunters be warned. If you don't intend to see a game to completion, don't earn that first achievement.

*Assuming the game does not have its 'Profile Features Limited'
**Free games are no longer an exception as of the latest Demos update.
See Exceptions to Rule #1 for details.


Unless the game has an achievement similar in concept to 'play the game for X hours', the amount of time you spend in a game has no bearing on AGCR eligibility. If you idle the game long enough to, say... collect all the trading cards... as long as no achievements are earned while you wait, the idled game will not harm your stats.


If a demo has achievements, they will count towards your score like any other game and (in every case that I've seen) its achievements are separate from the full game when making your calculations.

Ex: Player Z owns a full game and has played its associated demo. Z has 6/10(60%) achievements on the full game and a 2/8(25%) on the demo. This is interpreted by Steam as a 60% and a 25%, not 8/18(44.4%).

There is a new caveat in which your earned achievements don't count towards your score. In some cases, Steam is now applying a new 'hold' status of sorts to newer, smaller (and often free-to-play) titles while it determines the validity of the game and its playerbase.

While this was originally shown on store pages only as "Steam is still learning about this game", this tag can be changed (upgraded?) to "Profile Features Limited". (Thank you to Rhyming_Rogue for alerting me to Valve's use of the latter!)

-- If a game is under one of these restrictions, you'll find this status in the game's features section (similar to the above picture) above the supported languages on the right side of the game's Store Page. From the pop-up tooltip itself, "This game is not currently eligible to appear in certain showcases on your Steam profile, and does not contribute to global Achievement or game collector counts."

I haven't tested this personally on my account yet, but with the help of cyber53, it appears this is indeed working exactly as described. Based on his library's numbers, if the 'limited' game had counted (specifically in this case, the 6/6 achievements from Project Eagle as of 1 December 2018), his showcase's count would be off by six and he'd have one more perfect game than is displayed.

On 30 August 2020, community member (and regular contributor) Rhyming_Rogue reported that their achievement showcase automatically updated when multiple games' learning/limited tags were finally removed.

08 February 2024 - It has been concluded that standalone mods with their own separate achievements are also 'Profile Features Limited', but their store page will not indicate them as such. This has been determined to be a default setting for standalone mods, but it appears to be possible for the developers of said games to make them showcase eligible by contacting Steam Support. Source
Thank you to Maxim for bringing this inconsistency to our attention!

Thank you again, Cyber, Rogue and Maxim for helping me tackle this new rule!


(NEW, JULY 2024) I'll leave the info here in case we see another revert (who can say what will happen with these showcases... there's just never anything official lol), but it seems as of the July 2024 'Great Demo Update' to the Steam storefront, removing a game from your library via Support no longer removes its achievements from the AGCR showcase.

The one 'feature' that came out of the relatively rapid series of changes in early 2023 was the ability to remove all progress from a free** (see below) game from your AGCR. Unlike every other game on the storefront that has any kind of pay-to-play value, removing a free game via Steam Support removes the achievements and the game itself from your calculation. (So no 0% weighing your average down!)

It should be noted that your showcase may not update itself right away after doing this. In this case, and in other similar cases, earning one new achievement in a different eligible game will often 'refresh' your numbers so they appear as expected. And if not, feel free to ask about your game(s) in the comments below! This is still a new-ish concept for all of us; plenty of questions that still need answers.

It should be noted that games removed in this way are 'hidden' from your AGCR calculation and your showcase numerical statistics, but the data will not be completely removed from your Steam account. To the point, if you decide to add the game you removed back onto your account, your achievements will be restored.

**By "free", we are reasonably certain that this means no purchases of any kind are made available at any point. A game might be 'free-to-play', but if there is any DLC, in-game purchases, Pay-to-Win features, or anything on the store page that asks for money, that game will almost certainly be a permanent fixture in your AGCR, and not eligible for the Exception to Rule #1.
This is still relatively unproven and based purely on patterns. If this can be proven false, I would be very interested to any evidence to the contrary.

Did you play any of The Orange Box games in 2007 prior to Valve adding the current, global achievement system? You might find that achievements earned during this time will appear in your showcase, but without timestamps.

Community member DrunkenEngineer has discovered that if any game in your library is made up entirely of achievements without timestamps, that game will not show up in your AGCR. If, however, there are a mix of achievements with and without timestamps, the game and all of its achievements, timestamp or not, will appear in your count.

The previous sentence then makes for an easy fix: Just earn one new achievement (which will become the one with a timestamp), and the game and any old achievements earned will immediately jump to your score.

Thank you again to DrunkenEngineer for puzzling out and sharing this absolutely bizarre exception!

It has also come to our attention that games that have been banned or restricted from the Steam storefront will have their showcase eligibility change. While examples currently provided are still few, community member Gequi has provided a convincing case toward this peculiarity.
Achievements from banned games do not count

With the knowledge that these games had been reported as 'Banned' by the achievement tracking site, Steam Hunters, Gequi was able to prove that said games were no longer affecting their score. Thank you again to Gequi for your assistance and extremely guide-friendly proof positive!

Continuing from Rule #1, if you've made progress (quest) toward an achievement, but still haven't completed one for a game, the game will still not count.

Proof: I have The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II - a game in which Steam says I have made progress towards a few achievements, but in fact, I have zero of them completed. If this game counted, my number of total eligible games would be off by one and my showcase AGCR would be different from my calculation.


To reiterate, progress towards an achievement (like the example above) is obviously not an earned achievement, and therefore does not make a game eligible for AGCR if no other achievements in the game have been completed.

In addition to individual achievements, a game in this category can also display a slight amount of progress in the total percentage bar at the top of the page instead of an empty bar. But again, this change does not indicate that a game has become eligible for AGCR. Thank you to TheColorUrple for pointing out this very sneaky caveat.

If you earn achievements in a not-free game that is not in your library for whatever reason, Steam still remembers them and they WILL still count. This includes achievements for games you played during a free weekend but never eventually bought!

Proof: I played "Trine" during a free weekend, earned 3 achievements out of a possible 33, but then didn't buy it right away.

If this game hadn't counted at the time*, my total achievements would have been off by 3, eligible games would have been off by 1, and the showcase's AGCR would have been different from my calculation. *I've since bought and completed Trine.

If you're interested in trying something out but worried that you won't end up buying or finishing it and then leaving a low percentage on your calculation, there is the option of making a secondary account. If you find it worth the hassle, it'll protect your AGCR until you decide if it's worth or not.
Thanks to ClydeBarker for thinking to bring up this idea here in the guide

Neither uninstalling or reinstalling a game will remove that game's affect on your AGCR.

Proof: I played "You Have to Win the Game", earned 14/14 achievements, uninstalled and subsequently reinstalled the game... purely in the name of science.

If this game didn't count, my total achievements would be off by 14, eligible games would be off by 1, and the showcase's AGCR would likely be different from my calculation.

As touched upon in Rule #1, removing all of a game's achievements does not make Steam forget that you ever earned one in the first place... and you will only be left with a 0% weighing your average down.


Some games have a built-in function to reset progress and sometimes can even take achievements off of your profile, but I have yet to experience or hear about a game that does so in a way that your AGCR is also cleansed of the game entirely.

It has also come to my attention that there are ways in which a user can externally 'remove' specific achievements from their own account via third-party applications.
But similar to in-game removal, the game itself will still NOT be removed from your list of eligible games. Use at your own risk!
Thank you tsuMi for sharing this information with me!

Steam Families has replaced Family Sharing as of September 2024. As far as AGCR is concerned, only the name has changed. Verified by community member senrign, the information here is still relevant and correct; your achievements are still your own, regardless of how games are shared.

Along the same lines of earning achievements for games that aren't actually attached to your account, Rule 3 seems to apply once again to games that you play using Steam's 'Shared Library' system.

While I haven't been able to test this myself, it does make perfect sense to me that any achievements earned while you play someone else's games on a Shared Library will affect your AGCR.


Another interesting question that I never would have thought to ask but worth noting - if our old friend Steam User Y plays a game on User X's account using the Shared Library, does one player's achievements affect the other's AGCR and vice versa? Will Y's new achievements have any affect on X's calculation?

That answer appears to be no. Steam's achievement system appears to be able to separate who earns the achievements and you are still solely responsible for raising or lowering your own score.

Thanks to Kenni Candlebrew for bringing Rule 6's concept and its explanation to my attention!


This coincides with an official Steam Client Update from February 28, 2014 that reads: Players who share computers can now also share their available libraries with one another, each earning their own achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam Cloud.

How many eligible games does Steam think I have?

The first step to getting on the right track is to ensure you're counting the appropriate number of games that Steam thinks you should be counting. By hovering your mouse over the number of achievements in your Showcase, a pop-up will appear (like above) giving you your starting point.
Thank you to Rhyming_Rogue again for suggesting I should post this easy-to-miss tip and to Cima for letting me borrow their nicer looking showcase for the screenshot.

So Steam says you need to be counting more games in your equation, but you have no idea what they were/are. If this is the case, you can use the Achievement Showcase on your profile page to help you out!

Click on one of the achievements you can display and check the "Game" dropdown menu. You'll then have to find any discrepancies between this list and your library, then count the number of earned achievements for these missing games**.
**I'm told this won't always completely work. The missing game itself will show up on the drop-down menu, but the user will see an error instead of a list of earned achievements.

From here, you can find out how many total achievements the game has from its store page to help you make an accurate calculation.

In my own example above, highlighted is 8-Bit Bayonetta, a game that has been removed from my library and the marketplace. This is now the only proof I have on Steam that I ever played this game!

What this method has over the Sorted Page (explained in the next section) is that it shows everything. If you've removed free games from your account, the free games' achievements won't count against your score, but they will still appear here to be displayed. This may or may not be helpful depending on what you're trying to accomplish, so if balancing your AGCR is your true goal, the Recently Played / Sorted Page omits more extraneous data to look through.


Community member Gequi has spearheaded an effort to combat another odd trend AGCR calculating (proof in comment section, May 2025). When an issue arises where your showcase's achievement count is wrong, but your games count is too high, your missing game may be the result of removed achievements.

Currently, the list of known games that have removed achievements at some point (or are on this list for reasons otherwise noted) are:
CS:GO
Stanley Parable Demo* (reported by Zozano)
Pixel Puzzles Ultimate Jigsaw Puzzles (reported by Gequi)
Destination Primus Vita** (reported by Gequi)
Agent Awesome (reported by Gequi)

*In a very bizarre example, the demo for the Stanley Parable will intentionally remove its only achievement unless special precautions are taken when the game is finished. Regardless of whether the game sits at 0/1 or 1/1 though, the game does not appear in the showcase. As of 10 Jun 2020, I'm still investigating whether this is an isolated incident or if there is a pattern to be found.
**Issue reported of achievements unlocking prematurely. Again, see Gequi's comments, May 2025, for more information.

Setting up a more comprehensive section for how I compile numbers for my Excel spreadsheet and things I do when I want to solve issues for others. Might condense and combine with 'Finding games your library is missing' if it feels right. It would probably benefit the guide to be a LOT more concise lol.


When starting a count, I use this page as opposed to the library. In addition to being nicely sorted from 100-to-0% completion here, as it turns out, your library may not always keep itself up-to-date with current numbers. Thank you to Laserstormelpies for finding this new oddity! -- The issue came to playing a game while 'offline; playing the game while connected solved the issue in the library, but the achievement completion page had it right to begin with!

From your profile, click on 'Recently Played', which will bring you to your version of the screen above. Click on 'All Games' and sort by 'Achievement Completion'.

This sorted page does not appear to include achievements earned from 'Shared Library' content. Thank you to Jellewho for puzzling out this very glaring weakness in this otherwise helpful page. If you're missing titles here and you know you've played games this way, this may be your first symptom to explore!

This sorted page also does not appear to display games removed from the Steam storefront. I have one unfinished game that is currently out of library and off the storefront; it does not show up in this sorted page. Instead, the game and its achievements do appear in the Achievement Showcase from the previous section. Both methods might need to be used to balance your AGCR!

Free games that have been removed from your account will not count against your AGCR and will also not appear here. As mentioned in the previous section, if you're looking for a record of free games that you played in the past, your best bet will be the Achievement Showcase.

A common issue for users keeping their AGCR up-to-date will be unexpected drops in the showcase's displayed value. If you haven't just started a new game, a decrease is almost always attributed to an existing game in your library adding achievements, either via update or DLC.

I'd been conditioned to going through my full library looking for changes to match against my Excel sheet. However, regular community contributor, trophytroll, has shared a website with me that tracks changes in achievement counts across Steam.
https://steamhunters.com/dlc

If you've been actively paying attention and know that the decrease was recent, it shouldn't take long to find a game that you own and be able to make corrections to your own calculation. However, If you're expecting an increase in the showcase's value but don't see it, it may take a little more digging through the list, assuming an error in your calculation isn't the cause.

Note also that, infrequently over the last few years, wild changes to the AGCR showcase can be the result of Profile Features Limited games incorrectly counting for a brief period of time.

If you notice an increase from your expected amount of eligible games (displayed by hovering your mouse over the number of achievements earned in the showcase), verify on your Limited games' store pages that the tag has actually been removed. If they have not, especially if your games count jumped by much more than one, this known error is likely the cause.

It is still unknown at this time why this occurs, but earning a single achievement to change the score or simply waiting for a few days will change the AGCR to its proper count.

As a way of relaying to new or returning readers that the AGCR formula and all of the above known rules are still working as intended (as far as I can tell) even when the guide itself has nothing new, I'll be posting any observations I can make, sporadic as they may be, of my personal percentage transitioning up or down as intended.

Again, do note that I'm very much not the be-all end-all for this! This is a check of as many known rules as are applicable to me; if you think you have a potentially unique case, I'd be happy to investigate - to help you out and make the guide as strong as possible!

The Great Demo Update of July 2024 seems to have fixed(?) free games having the statistics removed from the showcase AGCR if the game itself is removed from your library via Steam Support.

I'd be more verbose in the Exceptions to Rule #1 if I had more info, but that's pretty much it! If you didn't hold on to old 'free game' data in your spreadsheets, that'd be the first place I'd look when reconciling your new showcase numbers.

11Sep24: Steam Families has replaced Steam Family Sharing. Having read through the official documentation, I see no difference in how AGCR is impacted between yesterday to today. You appear to still be responsible for your own and only your own achievements, regardless if you're playing a family member's game or sharing your game with someone else.

Vintage: A TON; and plenty more information that I have no idea what to do with yet lol
TheColorUrple: Assisted with Rule #2
Clyde Barker: Assisted with Rule #3
Andlean: Assisted with Rule #4
tsuMi: Assisted with Rule #5
Candlebrew: Assisted with Rule #6
カウント-0-INTERRUPT: Assisted with Exceptions to Rule #1
DrunkenEngineer: Added an exception to Rule #1, greatly assisted with the March 2023 update to the guide, All-Star community question answerer
Maxim: Added the Mod Store Page Exception to Rule #1
Rhyming_Rogue: Assisted with Exceptions to Rule #1, How to Find Games Your Library is Missing
Zozano: Assisted with How to Find Games Your Library is Missing
Laserstormelpies: Assisted with Balancing Your Score
Jellewho: Assisted with Balancing Your Score
trophytroll: Assisted with Balancing Your Score and All-Star community question answerer
ARTIsshoque: Spearheaded and completed a massive amount of day one research towards Removing Games from Your AGCR
ANGELØX·Ð3v1L: Newsbreaker, frequent contributor during the 2023 'Games Removed?' Era and All-Star community question answerer
Gequi: Contributed towards the Banned / Restricted section of Exceptions to Rule #1, Games with Removed Achievements
Cima: Contributed multiple screenshots used in this guide


Anything I missed? Surely there must be something. -- Questions about what's listed here or on something related that isn't? Feel free to ask! I'm happy to help!

I've met a lot of wonderful people through this guide over the years. Thank you to everyone for dropping by and sharing your stories and questions!

Thank you very much to everyone that has left the guide awards! I'm unable to see who's giving them (by Steam's design I suppose), but it is genuinely uplifting to see a reminder that this big community collaboration still means something to somebody out there. <3