How Steam tags work (and how to choose yours)

Tags are the short labels on every Steam store page: "Roguelite", "Cozy", "Co-op", "Pixel Graphics". They look small, but they help decide where your game shows up on Steam and which players see it. Here's how they work, and how to choose yours with confidence.

What Steam tags are

A tag describes something about a game: its genre, its theme, its mood, its art style, how many people can play. Together, a game's tags paint a quick picture of what it's like to play, both for players reading your store page and for Steam itself.

Who applies them

Tags aren't only yours to set. According to Valve, three groups can apply tags to a game:

• You, the developer, in Steamworks.
• Players with full Steam accounts, who can add tags from your store page.
• Steam's moderators.

Because players take part, your tags and their order can shift over time as the community tags your game. If a tag appears that doesn't describe your game's content, theme or nature, you can remove it.

How many tags you can use

Valve requires at least five tags on a game before it launches and recommends adding up to twenty. A game can collect more than that, but only the top twenty are shown to players and used by Steam to decide where your game appears. Think of those twenty as your game's description in Steam's own language.

What tags do for your game

• Browsing. Steam uses your tags to work out which genre and theme pages your game appears on.
• Recommendations. Players who enjoy games with a similar mix of tags are more likely to see yours suggested to them. Here, the overlap between several tags matters more than their exact order.
• Search and filters. Players narrow down search results by picking tags, so a missing tag can mean missing those players.
• Events. During Steam Next Fest, your tags help decide how your game is sorted on the festival pages. Our Next Fest guide has more.

Why order matters

Not every tag counts the same. Valve explains that the tags ranked highest on your game shape your visibility more than the rest, and that some store filters look first at a game's top fifteen tags. So put the tags that best describe the core of your game at the top, and keep them in order of how true they are.

A simple test: if a player could only read your first five tags, would they know what kind of game they're getting?

How to choose your tags

1. Start with the core experience

Begin with what a player spends most of their time doing. That's usually your genre and sub-genre: "Roguelite" and "Deckbuilder", or "Farming Sim" and "Life Sim". Then add what makes it feel the way it does: theme, setting, mood, art style.

2. Add how people play

Single-player, co-op, online, local multiplayer, controller support, length and difficulty. These are the things players filter by when they know what they want.

3. Only use tags that are truly yours

It can be tempting to add a popular tag that only half fits. Resist it. Tags put your game in front of players who are looking for that experience; if your game doesn't deliver it, they leave, and you've spent your visibility on the wrong audience. Honest tags help the right players find you.

4. Look at the games players will compare you with

Find a handful of games that are genuinely like yours and look at their tags. You'll often spot a tag you'd forgotten, or see how others describe the same kind of experience. Our free Games Like Yours tool finds those games for you, and Store Page Check shows the tags they share and the ones you might be missing.

5. Use Valve's tag wizard as a starting point

Steamworks includes a tagging wizard that walks you through tags across genres, themes, moods and features. It's a great way to make sure you've considered the full range. Valve notes that its suggested order isn't guaranteed to be right, because it doesn't know what your game is actually like, so review the order yourself before you publish.

What's popular right now

These are the tags that turn up most often among upcoming games' top five tags right now, with the number of upcoming games that count each one among their top five.

A popular tag is a good sign that players love that kind of game, but it also means more games competing for the same attention. Broad tags like these work best paired with more specific ones that say what makes your game different.

Common tag mistakes

• Leading with a broad tag. "Indie" or "Casual" says little on its own. Put the tags that describe your game's heart first.
• Chasing trends. A trending tag that doesn't fit brings visitors who won't stay.
• Setting and forgetting. Players add tags over time. Check your store page every so often and tidy up anything that no longer fits.
• Leaving slots empty. With up to twenty tags shown, each empty slot is a missed chance to reach players looking for exactly what you made.
• Describing the game you planned, not the one you made. As your game changes during development, update your tags with it.

Revisit your tags at key moments

Tags aren't a one-time job. Good moments to look again are when you publish your coming-soon page, after a big update to your demo, after Next Fest (when lots of players have tried your game and may have tagged it) and just before launch. Each time, ask whether your top tags still describe what players will actually experience.

Steam tags at a glance

• At least five tags before launch, up to twenty shown on your store page.
• Developers, players and Steam's moderators can all apply tags.
• Tags shape browsing, recommendations, search filters and festival pages.
• Order matters: your most accurate, most central tags go first.
• Honest tags bring the right players.

Free tools for this step

• Store Page Check: See the tags games like yours share, the ones you might be missing, and how your price compares.
• Games Like Yours: Meet the games players will compare yours with, and what they have in common.