Valve have revealed a round of changes to the tags which can be applied to games on the Steam store. The ones designed to give you a brief idea of the genres or themes you’re in for if you opt to give any specific game a go, as well as grouping together similar works. 17 new tags have been added as a result of this rather substantial revamp, while 28 have been consigned to the scrapheap, and merging or updating several others.
In a blog post outlining the changes, Valve noted that their last big tag revamp of this nature came back in 2024 – when the likes of Dice, Dwarf, and Boomer Shooter were added – and that the goal with such changes is “helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations”. Among the additions this time around are the likes of Bullet Heaven for reverse Bullet Hells in which you “focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies”, Samurai, and Poker. Housework-based games have been split into three new categories: Organizing, Cleaning, and Decorating. Meanwhile, Chinese fantasy genres Wuxia and Xianxia now have their own tags.
There is now also a Steam tag dedicated specifically to Capybaras.
Arguably more noteworthy are the tags Valve have ditched. Most notably in light of the issues surrounding adult games and payment processors last year is the removal of the NSFW and Mature tags. “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”, Valve wrote. Whether that more specific labelling of adult games going forwards will influence the chances of adult games like Santa Rangione’s Horses making it onto Steam is likely something worth keeping an eye on.
Beyond that, subjective tags like Masterpiece, ones which apply to specific intellectual property like LEGO or Warhammer 40K, and rarely used ones like Drama have bitten the dust. As have America, Blood, Illuminati, and Roguevania, which is terrible news for anyone making a crimson-hued roguevania about stateside conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the most eye-catching of the modifications is as follows: “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”.
So, there you go. Feel free to browse any of the new tags if, having read the full list, you reckon any will result in lists of games that’re right up your alley.
