- Steam Tags have undergone a major overhaul for discovery purposes
- Valve added 17 new tags, removed 28 and merged some
- Removed tags “no longer serve to make connections between games or describe unique and useful in-game content items”
Valve has made huge changes to Steam’s discovery functionality by introducing new tags, removing some, and merging several from the digital storefront.
As detailed in the last blog post, Steam gained 17 new tags, removed 28, and a handful of others were merged or updated to improve recommendations for players and improve game discovery by developers.
“These changes are intended to help players identify games that best match their interests and to help Steam generate appropriate recommendations,” Valve said.
“Tags help developers better describe their game to players, but also help Steam understand what type of game it is and show it accordingly to players via recommendations. Tags are also the foundation on which each of the store hubs is built, allowing players to find all games tagged with their preferred genre, theme, style, or other relevant context.”
Steam tags are used primarily by developers, but also by players and Steam moderators, so a game’s tags may change over time as users apply their own tags to reflect their experience.
Here are some examples of the tags that have been added, including “Bullet Heaven”, which Valve says is “the opposite of Bullet Hell” and for games with a “Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies.”
There is also “Desktop Companion”, for games that accompany the user on their screen while they are busy doing something else, “Organizing” for virtual spaces that need cleaning, “Decorating”, which is quite self-explanatory, and “Wuxia” for a historical fantasy adventure featuring martial arts.
Valve explained that the removed tags were because “they no longer serve to make connections between games or describe unique and useful pieces of content in the game”, and because many of them provide alternative options.
“For example, the tags ‘NSFW’ and ‘Mature’ have a very high degree of overlap with more descriptive tags such as ‘Gore,’ ‘Violent,’ and ‘Sexual Content,'” Valve said.
“Some of the other tags we’re removing today may be too subjective, like ‘Well Written’ and ‘Masterpiece,’ leading to disagreement and inconsistent enforcement. Some tags simply don’t apply to very many products, like “Drama” and “Ambient.”
Some tags apply to specific intellectual property, like “LEGO” or “Warhammer 40K” and are usually already covered by developers and publishers.
Modified/edited tags more or less represent tags that mean more than one thing, so Valve has made some adjustments. For example, “Conversation” was renamed “Dialogue Heavy” for clarity, and a few tags were made plural to match other tags, such as Dogs, Foxes, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and Assassins.
Furthermore, the new Steam Controller, one of the best PC controllers available today, was officially released ahead of the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, which were recently delayed due to the ongoing RAM shortage crisis.
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