Expect some big changes to the labels you see on a game's Steam Store page from now on, as Valve's digital platform has announced some big changes to the Steam Store Tags. They've removed 28, added 17 tags, and modified others in order to make the labels you see slapped on games a bit more identifiable.
It's easy to see why many of the 28 tags were removed, as Steam identifies issues with certain tags overlapping, being too constrictive, or otherwise not being clear enough in what they mean. The 'Mature' and 'NSFW' tags, for example, overlapped too much with 'Gore,' 'Violent,' and 'Sexual Content,' without being clear which it meant. You might want to play a gory NSFW game, but you might not want it to be a gooner game with sexual content, for instance.
Some big brand tags were also removed. Dungeons & Dragons, Games Workshop, and Warhammer 40K were taken off the Steam Store, likely so the games attached to those brands could be identified by genre, rather than simply the IP they're attached to.
In terms of what tags were added, we see that there's a fairly significant focus on furry friends, as Zoo, Animals, Wolves, and Capybara were all added as new tags. There's also now tags for Wuxia and Xianxia games, heralding the arrival of big games coming from prominent Chinese developers. Check out a full list of the new tags below:
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
Modified tags are effectively tags that haven't been removed, but have had their wordings changed. For example, Pool is now Billiards, due to it being associated with games that involved a swimming pool. Conversation has been renamed to Dialogue-Heavy. Again, it's all about that additional clarity. Check out the removed and modified tags below, too:
REMOVED:
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
MODIFIED:
Clicker" has been renamed into "Incremental" to capture the broader essence of games that focus on numbers going up.
"Conversation" has been renamed to "Dialogue Heavy" for clarity
We've made a few tags plural to match other tags: Dogs, Foxes, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and Assassins
"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
Merging "Jet" into "Flight", as the term "Jet" was not unique enough.
Merging "Unforgiving" into "Difficult" since these terms mostly overlap in usage and intent