Valve wants to make games easier to find with new Steam tagging system

Valve added a tag system to Steam today that allows users to tag any game listed on the service with a short, descriptive snippet of text. Users can then use those tags to find similarly-themed games, which should improve the discoverability of all games on the service and decrease the odds that smaller titles will get lost in the rapid-fire shuffle of Steam's new release list. Here's how it works: You can now append descriptive tags to any product listed on Steam, and up to twenty of the most popular tags for any given product will be displayed on its Steam page. Swear words will be filtered out by Valve, but otherwise it seems like pretty much anything goes. The most popular tags on the Steam page for a game like Starbound, for example, are terms like "indie", "sandbox" and "pixel graphics." Other users can then click on a tag to see a list of other games that are similarly tagged. Valve also added a new Popular Tags page to Steam that lists the most popular tags across the service, as well as the games that sport them most frequently. Steam will also automatically suggest other games you might enjoy based on how the games you play currently are tagged, in a "Recommended Tags" list that can be found within Steam's new "For You" recommendations section. If you don't agree with the tags that are being appended to your own game, well -- tough luck. Valve has not currently publicized any plans to add a system for contesting tags, though the tagging system is still technically in beta testing. That said, the new features are available to every Steam user right now.