Valve has confirmed a rare overhaul of Steam's tagging system, cutting 28 tags and adding 17 new ones in what the company says is its most significant tag update in years. The last time Steam added tags at any scale was 2024, when Dice, Dwarf, Boomer Shooter, and Elf made the list.
"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," reads the official Steam blog post. “These changes are made with the goal of helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations.”
The tags that didn't make the cut
The removals are a mix of brand names, vague quality descriptors, and legacy categories that have clearly outlived their usefulness. Gone are Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K, LEGO, and Games Workshop, all of which were tied to specific intellectual properties rather than describing what a game actually plays like. That kind of brand-based tagging was always a bit awkward on a platform designed around discovery, and Valve has clearly decided it creates more noise than signal.
Also getting the axe: Masterpiece, Well-Written, Cult Classic, and NSFW. The first three are subjective quality labels that were never going to be applied consistently, and NSFW has presumably been replaced by more specific age-gating tools. Roguevania is also out, which is a small signal that the Metroidvania-meets-roguelite subgenre label has peaked as a meaningful discovery category.
The full list of removed tags includes: 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, and Well-Written.
What's replacing them
The 17 new tags lean hard into specificity and emerging genre trends. Bullet Heaven is the standout addition, officially codifying the Vampire Survivors-style genre where you upgrade and auto-attack your way through enemy hordes. The genre has exploded over the past few years, and now it has an official home on Steam's discovery system.
Here's the full list of new additions:
The Wuxia and Xianxia additions are worth noting. Both are genres rooted in Chinese fiction and game culture, and their inclusion reflects the growing influence of Chinese-developed games on Steam's catalog.
Valve also renamed two existing tags without removing them. "Conversation" has become "Dialogue Heavy" and "Clicker" has shifted to "Incremental," both of which are more descriptive for players browsing the store.
The tags that actually run Steam
Valve closed the blog post with some context on what tags dominate the platform right now. Singleplayer sits at the top, applied to 98,000 games, which works out to roughly 62 percent of everything on Steam. Indie comes in second at 82,000 games, covering about 53 percent of the catalog.
Those numbers tell you something real about what Steam actually is at this point. It's a platform where the majority of games are solo experiences built by small teams. The tagging changes reflect that reality, prioritizing the kind of granular genre descriptors that help someone find a good cozy organizing game or a proper Bullet Heaven over broad brand associations that don't help discovery at all.
Steam's most-applied tags
For players, the practical effect should be better recommendations and cleaner genre browsing. If you've been hunting for Vampire Survivors alternatives or want to find every zoo management sim on the platform, the updated tag system should make that easier. Check out our game reviews and gaming guides to find what's worth playing in those newly labeled genres once the updated tags start surfacing fresh recommendations across the store.
