How to choose Steam tags for your game

Steam does not read your description to decide who might like your game. It reads your tags. Tag pages, browse views, the filters beside search results, the similar-games row on store pages, and the recommendations players see all run on the top 20 tags a game carries. A game tagged like the games its players already love is shown to them; a game tagged generically is shown to no one in particular.

The obvious instinct is to tag broadly, so the game appears in more places: Action, Adventure, Indie, Singleplayer, Casual. Valve's own documentation explains why that backfires. In its recommendations, less common tags carry more weight than common ones, and its example is that "Action" does little while "Party-Based RPG" does a lot. Broad tags put you in big crowds; specific ones put you next to the right games.

• At least 5 tags before launch; Valve recommends up to 20.
• Only the top 20 count. A game can carry more, but only the top 20 are visible and used for visibility, recommendations and similarity.
• Order is weight. Higher tags influence visibility more. Set the order in the Tag Wizard.
• The top 5 describe the game on its store page, so they should paint a clear picture.
• Some store filters use the first 15, so order those by relevance.
• Players add tags too, from non-limited accounts, and a tag's weight grows as more players apply it. You can remove inaccurate or unwanted tags.
• Demos inherit the base game's tags, and tags are translated for each player's language, in the same order.
• Tag changes publish separately from the store page, so retagging does not disturb pending store edits.

Valve sorts tags into a few kinds. A strong set covers each, with the most specific version first:

Valve's description of its tag matching has three rules worth memorising:

1. Overlap beats order. Sharing several tags with a game matters more than where those tags sit in your list.
2. Rare beats common. A tag few games carry tells Steam more than one every game carries.
3. The top 20 are the whole profile. Tags below 20 do nothing for recommendations or the similar-games row.

So the most valuable tags are the specific ones your comparable games share: if the five games most like yours all carry "Roguelike Deckbuilder", "Turn-Based Tactics" and "Cozy", those belong near the top of your list. Spend no top slots on "Indie" or "Singleplayer"; Valve's own Suggest Prioritization moves generic tags like those down.

1. List five to ten comparable games: recent, same genre and scope, ideally ones whose players you want. Our Steam tag lookup reads any game's tags.
2. Collect their tags and count how often each appears across the set.
3. Keep the shared tags that truly describe your game. A tag your game does not earn sends players who will bounce, and they review accordingly.
4. Order them: the most specific genre and core-loop tags first, then mood and visuals, then features and player modes, then broad tags last.
5. Run the Wizard's Suggest Prioritization and compare. Valve calls it a simple starting point that may not be accurate; keep your order where you have a reason.
6. Check the top 5 as a sentence. "Roguelike Deckbuilder, Turn-Based, Cozy, Pixel Graphics, Fantasy" should read like a description a player would recognise.
7. Revisit after launch: read the tags players added, remove inaccurate ones from the store page with the flag beside each tag, and promote the ones players chose that you missed.

For an illustrative, made-up game, a cosy farming roguelite in pixel art for one or two players, an ordered top fifteen might read:

Roguelite, Farming Sim, Cozy, Pixel Graphics, Top-Down, Life Sim, Relaxing, Procedural Generation, Crafting, Resource Management, Cute, Local Co-Op, Online Co-Op, Indie, Singleplayer.

The first five say what it is and how it feels; the next five are the mechanics players filter by; the last five are true but common, so they sit where they cost nothing. Every one of them should survive the question: would a player who chose this tag be glad they found this game?

• Generic tags at the top. "Indie", "Action" and "Casual" in the top five tell Steam almost nothing.
• Aspirational tags. "Open World" on a level-based game, "Souls-like" on a game that is merely hard; players who came for those leave.
• Trend-chasing. A popular tag that does not fit puts you in a crowd of games that do.
• Ignoring player tags. Wrong community tags, "Family Friendly" on a horror game, drag in the wrong audience until you remove them.
• Forgetting themed fests. Valve invites games to themed fests by their tags; an accurate genre tag is your application. See Steam themed festivals.

Tags are a matching system, and matching can trap a game that is genuinely new. If nothing on Steam is quite like your game, the specific tags that describe it may have few games behind them and little traffic. In that case, lead with the nearest established sub-genre players already search for, and let the rarer, truer tags follow. A tag strategy is a bet on which players will love the game, not a description contest.

Flockbay's Steam page sets tags from three to five comparable games it reads on their own store pages, most defining first, for you to check, and exports the page as a .zip you upload yourself. Preparing the page by hand and its .zip are free; drafting is free in beta until 1 December 2026.