[Steam 0]

Today we've made some changes to the set of official store tags available on Steam, adding 17 new tags, removing 28, and merging/updating a handful of others. These changes are made with the goal of helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations.

Each year, we typically add a few new tags based on community feedback, but it has been a while since we last did so (Most recently in 2024 when we added Dice, Dwarf, Boomer Shooter, and Elf tags). In the time since, we've built up a list of tags to add, remove, and update.

Store tags support recommendations and exploration

Tags help developers better describe their game to players, but also help Steam understand what kind of game it is and show it accordingly to players via recommendations. Tags are also the foundation upon which each of the store hubs are built, allowing players to find all of the games tagged with their favorite genre, theme, style, or other relevant context.

Tags can be applied to a game by the developer, by players with non-limited accounts, and also by Steam moderators. This means that a game's tags can shift over time as more customers play the game and contribute their perspective on what tags are most relevant for each game. Over time, the types of games that exist and the way customers look at games changes too - so today, we have a list of changes to our current set of tags. Read on for specifics.

New Tags

New tags are added when there are enough games on Steam that the tag could apply to, and when we think it helps establish a connection between games that couldn't already be attained through other combinations of tags. Some of these are content-specific, such as "Wolves" and "Zoo". Others represent broader genres such as "Bullet Heaven" and "Desktop Companion". And some tags cover specific game mechanics such as "Organizing" and "Decorating".

Here is the full list of tags added today:

• Bullet Heaven - The opposite of Bullet Hell; Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies

• Desktop Companion - Games that only use part of your screen and keep you company while you do other things

• Organizing - Tidy up, de-clutter, or unpack, carefully placing items in virtual spaces

• Cleaning - Satisfying removal of grime and dirt from stuff

• Decorating - Creative placement of furniture and other objects

• Wuxia - Historical fantasy adventure featuring martial arts, competing sects, and inner qi

• Xianxia - Fantasy adventure focused on cultivating supernatural powers and strength

• Falling Blocks - Arranging, rotating, and placing blocks from above

• Espionage - Spying or secretly securing valuable intel

• Samurai - Japanese warriors best known for katanas, loyalty, and self-discipline

• Zoo - Care for and display a park full of wild animals

• Wolves - Also known as Canis Lupus

• Capybaras - The largest and possibly most adorable rodent species

• Animals - Cute and furry, or large and terrifying and everything in between

• Cult - Small groups with extreme devotion to a person, thing, or belief

• Poker - Draw, bet, and bluff

• Language Learning - Learning and teaching new languages

Removed Tags

We haven't often removed tags from Steam, so we've built up quite a list. The set that we've removed today are done so because they no longer serve a good purpose for establishing connections between games or describing unique and useful elements of content in the game. Many of these tags have alternative options on Steam that better describe the content, and already have a high degree of overlap in application.

For example, both the "NSFW" tag and the "Mature" tag have a very high degree of overlap with more descriptive tags such as "Gore", "Violent", and "Sexual Content".

Some of the other tags that we are removing today are perhaps too subjective like "Well-Written" and "Masterpiece", resulting in disagreements and inconsistent application. Some tags just don't apply to very many products, such as "Drama" and "Ambient".

And lastly, there are a number of tags that apply to specific intellectual property, an attribute that community-sourced information like tags is not well suited for. These collections of intellectual property are typically already covered by the developers and publishers setting up franchise pages to collect together officially all the content shared by that IP.

Here is the full list of tags being removed:

• 3D Vision

• Ambient

• America

• Blood

• Crowdfunded

• Cult Classic

• Documentary

• Drama

• Dungeons & Dragons

• Electronic

• Experience

• Feature Film

• Foreign

• GameMaker

• Games Workshop

• Illuminati

• Kickstarter

• LEGO

• Masterpiece

• Mature

• Movie

• Narration

• NSFW

• Roguevania

• RPGMaker

• Warhammer 40K

• Web Publishing

• Well-Written

Modified Tags

We also have a set of tags that we've renamed or merged together to clean up some redundancy or to explain the content more clearly.

• "Clicker" has been renamed into "Incremental" to capture the broader essence of games that focus on numbers going up.

• "Conversation" has been renamed to "Dialogue Heavy" for clarity

• We've made a few tags plural to match other tags: Dogs, Foxes, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and Assassins

• "Pool" was humorously applied to games with a swimming pool, so we've renamed this to "Billiards", which is the overarching term for all games played with cue sticks anyway

• Merging "Jet" into "Flight", as the term "Jet" was not unique enough.

• Merging "Unforgiving" into "Difficult" since these terms mostly overlap in usage and intent

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What do I do with this information?

A. If any of the newly added tags are of interest to you, feel free to explore the new store hubs to explore the relevant games. If you are aware of a game that should have one of these new tags and doesn't already, you can apply it yourself to help that game get categorized properly.

Q. How are tags applied to games?

A. User tags are applied by game developers in the process of preparing for release, and can also be applied by users to help fill in the gaps where games may be missing useful metadata. To add your own tag to a game, just visit the store page for a game and click the little "+" (Plus) symbol next to the list of tags that appear near the top of the page.

Q. What if I see a game tagged with something that is wrong or inaccurate?

A. Letting customers tag games directly adds a bunch of valuable data to the store. But yes, sometimes people deliberately mis-tag a game. If you see that, feel free to report it to Valve or the game developer- it's quick and easy for a developer to remove a tag if they need to do so. To report a tag you see, just visit the store page for a game and click the little "+" (Plus) symbol next to the list of tags that appear near the top of the page. That will open a pop-up with a list of tags. Just click the little flag that appears next to the tag you wish to report.

Q. What if I had marked as 'excluded' one of the tags that got merged or updated?

A. Your excluded tag should migrate with any changes, so that you're still ignoring the thing that you wanted. (FYI for those not familiar with excluding tags: You can exclude specific tags to filter them out of most places across the Steam store. Just visit your store preferences and scroll down to "Tags To Exclude")

Q. Why isn't my favorite tag on this list?

A. We are not all-knowing, so we sometimes miss stuff. Let us know in the comments. We also don't agree with the appropriateness of every tag that the community advocates for, so we may be unable to add every tag that y'all want.

Q. What are the most common tags on Steam?

A. The "Singleplayer" tag wins by being applied to over 98,000 games (about 62% of all games on Steam). The runner up is the "Indie" tag, which is applied to more than 82,000 games (about 53% of all games on Steam). Then "Action", "Casual", and "Adventure" in that order.

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