Steam: How to Reset Game Achievements on Steam

So you wanna reset your achievements eh? While you could use SAM, this way is “safer” in terms of you not needing to install any third party programs to do this as it is done entirely through Steam.

So before we start let me give you a couple ⚠️WARNINGS⚠️ and absolutely read these or you risk breaking things, this goes for any method of resetting achievements so listen up.

• 1. While this can reset your achievements there are some games where this can break achievements aka make then unobtainable, there is no dedicated list for this as such i am unable to provide any here but a tip to avoid this is try not to do it on online only games that have their own ingame achievement trackers as the issue stems from server connections most of the time i believe.
• 2. Kind of a continuation on the last one some games will re-award you achievements when booting back into a game or loading a save after resetting. this is caused usually by one of two things one of which being possibly fixable.

  A. Due to there being a profile file of some sort, along with your save files usually, this is the one that’s fixable as long as you can find the offending file.

  B. Due to a game being online and having constant server connection where the server can cross check with steam to verify you have the correct achievements as such this can’t be fixed without a whole new Steam and/or game profile to my knowledge.

So before resetting your game your gonna need something called an AppID of your Steam game, in short form it’s Steam’s way of identifying a game within it’s database. If you want to know more look it up but for now i will show you how it get it through Steam’s properties menu.

I will be using No Man’s Sky as an example here but follow along with whatever game of your choice.

• 1. Find your game in library list.

  

• 2. Right click in the game in your list and navigate to the properties tab.

  

• 3. Select the updates tab and find App ID as shown and make a note of your games App ID for the next step.

  

So for the next step we have to enable something called Steam console so we can put in a command to reset the achievement(s), this is as simple as running a windows run command to enable the console. You need not worry about it staying there as the console will disappear on reboot of your steam app and/or system.

• 1. Make sure Steam is running and then press the windows key and the r key at the same time.
  
• 2. Enter into the box that has just opened up and hit ok:
  

  steam://open/console

  

• 3. Once you have done this a new tab in the steam app should have opened along the top, click into it if it has not automatically opened.
  
• 4. Read the next bit as it’s important on deciding what you want to do

So for resetting achievements you have two options:
a. Reset all achievements for your game.
b. Reset a singular achievement for your game.

Due to a singular achievement reset being more complicated I will start with the full achievement reset of a singular game. Read that again, a full achievement reset of a singular game, if you only want to reset one achievement move on to the Preparing for Singular Achievement Reset section onwards.

So thankfully the full achievement reset is the easy one and it’ll take a single command to do but it goes without saying…

⚠️All in-game achievements will be reset and will need to be re-earned!⚠️

Once you enter this command there’s no going back so make sure this is what you want to do!

When you enter the command you will see a section that looks like <appid>, you want to replace this with the AppID of the game that you want to reset (what I said to make note of earlier) and remove the <>.

reset_all_stats <appid>

Once you have inputted this command you will see a short confirmation stating.

“reset_all_stats success for appid xxxxxx”

The x’s changing depending on the game’s AppID naturally.

Now that this is done, close out of Steam fully by closing Steam in your system tray. You do this by clicking the arrow on the right side of your taskbar (shown on image below) and then right clicking on Steam’s icon and pressing “Exit Steam”, if Steam isn’t in there it’s likely on the task bar near the system tray arrow.

Now reboot into Steam and voila! Your achievements have been reset and you can go about earning them again, have fun!

As for the people that want to reset singular achievements we move (begrudgingly) onto the next bit.

So for resetting singular achievements things get a little more complicated as we need to find the achievements API name this will be done using a website called SteamDB.[steamdb.info]

SteamDB[steamdb.info] is a third-party website that provides insight into the Steam platform and its database and it has been used for years by lots of people so it is completely safe. but if you want to double check go ahead.[www.google.com] For those who are ready to, lets move on.

• 1. Go to the website SteamDB[steamdb.info] and you will be brought to the landing page which looks like this:
  
• 2. Using the search bar at the top of the page look for the game you want to use and click on your games name to enter it’s page. (I will be using No Man’s Sky again as an example)
  
• 3. Once on your games page, look for the achievements tab on the left side.
  
• 4. Once on the achievements page, on the Display name and description column look for the achievement you would like to reset, once you have found it, look on the API name column to the left of the achievement and take note of the string (name).
  

In this example i am looking at the “Use of Weapons” achievement with a description of “Attain ‘Novice’ status in Ships Destroyed” and the API name of this achievement is simply the word “THUG” in uppercase letters, take note of that phrase/word from your version as we will need it later as well as the AppID that we got earlier from the Getting your AppID Section of this guide.

The next step we will finally move onto resetting the achievement.

So now we can reset the achievement and it only takes one command but it goes without saying…

⚠️Your in-game achievement will be reset and will need to be re-earned!⚠️

Once you enter this command there’s no going back so make sure this is what you want to do!

When you enter the command you will see a section that looks like <appid> and <achievement name> you want to replace this with the AppID of the game and the API name of the achievement that you want to reset (what I said to make note of earlier) and remove the <>.

achievement_clear <appid> <achievement name>

Once you have inputted this command you will see a short confirmation stating.

achievement_clear success: xxxxxx

The x’s changing depending on the achievement’s API name.

Now that this is done, close out of steam fully by closing steam in your system tray. You do this by clicking the arrow on the right side of your taskbar ( shown on image below) and then right clicking on Steams icon and pressing “Exit Steam”, if Steam isn’t in there it’s likely on the task bar near the system tray arrow.

Now reboot into steam and voila! Your achievement has been reset and you can go about earning it again, have fun!