Steam tags: how they work and how to pick them
29 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
Tags tell players what your game is at a glance, and they tell Steam where to show it: which browse pages, which recommendations, which "More Like This" rows. This guide covers how many you need, who can add them, how weight and order work and how to pick them, from Valve's Steam tags documentation, checked 29 Oct 2026.
What tags do
Valve says tags help players quickly learn about your game and help Steam decide where it should be displayed. Beyond the store page, a good set of tags helps when players browse genres and categories, search with tags, explore tag-driven recommendations and use tag-driven dynamic Collections in their Library.
Who applies them
Tags can be applied by you, by players with non-limited accounts and by Steam moderators. Players' tags mix with yours, and as more customers add a tag, its weight goes up. Valve says the tags and weights can change as the community applies them, though in practice they tend not to fluctuate much. You can revisit them at any time.
You set yours in the Tag Wizard: Store Presence, Edit Store Page, Basic Info, under Tags. It needs the Edit App Metadata and Publish App Changes to Steam permissions for the game. The Recommended Actions page in Steamworks also lists titles most in need of tagging, with a link to the wizard for each.
Picking your tags
Steam has hundreds of approved tags. The wizard walks you through groups and highlights tags that may fit, based on what similar games on Steam use:
Stuck? Valve suggests looking at similar games on Steam and noting their tags, or browsing the list of popular tags.
Specific beats broad. Some of Steam's algorithms give rarer tags more weight. In Valve's words, "Action" matters very little, while "Party-Based RPG" has much more influence.
Sources: Steam tags. Checked 29 Oct 2026. Valve updates these pages; the Steamworks docs always win.
Weight and order
In the wizard you put your tags in order, and that order sets their weight. Tags with more weight govern visibility more than those with less. On the store page they are shown in weight order, which can shift as players add tags.
The wizard has a Suggest Prioritization button. Valve calls it a very simple algorithm that moves high-information tags such as sub-genres up and low-information ones such as "indie" or "singleplayer" down. It has no knowledge of what your game is actually like, so treat it as a starting point and override it. The similar games the wizard shows are a tag comparison only, not the results of the More Like This algorithm.
Publishing and removing tags
When you finish the wizard it asks you to publish. That publish is separate from the store page publish, so it does not touch any store changes you have pending.
You can remove a tag that does not reflect the content, theme or nature of your game, such as "family friendly" on a horror game or "2D" on a 3D game, in Valve's examples. Two ways:
Recommendations, More Like This and search
Tags also decide eligibility for Steam's themed fests, which is covered in Steam themed fests 2027.
Languages, demos and other app types
Sources: Steam tags. Checked 29 Oct 2026. Valve updates these pages; the Steamworks docs always win.
Where a broadcast fits
Good tags bring the right players to your store page; then the page has to show them the game. A live broadcast there does that from the moment they land, every hour of the day, next to the tags that brought them. Loopcast keeps a store page broadcast running from an uploaded video, billed per minute on air. You can try it free for 7 days, no card needed. The rest of the page is in the store page checklist.
FAQ
How many tags does a Steam game need?
Valve requires at least 5 tags before a game launches on Steam and recommends adding up to 20. Many tags can be applied, but only the top 20 are visible to users and used by Steam for visibility.
Who can add tags to my Steam game?
The developer, players with non-limited accounts, and Steam moderators. Tags players add mix with yours, and as more customers add a tag, its weight increases.
Does tag order matter on Steam?
Yes. Tags with more weight govern visibility more, your top 5 are used to describe the game, and some store filters prioritize the first 15. For tag-based recommendations, Valve says overlap matters more than order.
How do I remove a wrong tag from my Steam game?
Reopen the Tag Wizard from Edit Store Page, Basic Info, Tags. Or on the store page, click the + next to the tags, hover over the tag and click the flag icon.
Does a Steam demo have its own tags?
No. Valve says a demo inherits the tags of its base game.