Steam is overhauling its tagging system for games, something it hasn’t done in years. This rare event is aimed at making the classifications used on Valve’s storefront more helpful, and it includes both the purging of old tags and the introduction of a bunch of new ones. “NSFW” is out, for example, while “Bullet Heaven” has been made the official tag for Vampire Survivors-likes.
“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,” a new blog post reads. “These changes are made with the goal of helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations.”
It continues, “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.”
Here’s what’s leaving:
- 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
And here’s what’s getting added:
- 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
As you can see, Valve is ditching lots of broader, more vague descriptors in favor of verbs and nouns that are more specific. We can also take away from this overhaul that certain subgenres, like “Roguevania,” are falling out of favor, while new ones, like “Desktop Companion,” are becoming more popular. The list also shows the rising prominence of genres coming from China, as well as the popularity of organizing messes in video games rather than IRL.
Valve is also merging or renaming some tags. “Conversation” has changed to “dialogue heavy” and “clicker” has shifted to “incremental.” But what are the most popular Steam tags of all, you might ask? The company signed off on its latest purge with the current most dominant tags, and none of them will come as a surprise. “Singleplayer” is the top one, applied to 98,000 games (or about 62 percent of the entire platform), followed by the “Indie” tag, which has 82,000 games (or about 53 percent of everything on Steam).