Valve Introduces User-Generated Steam Tags

In an effort to help users more easily traverse the expanding mountain of content on Steam, Valve has launched Steam Tags, a user-defined categorizing feature.

Through Steam Tags, the community is able to tag games with genres, themes, attributes or any information they feel pertains to a piece of software. Yes, swear words will be filtered out, for everyone.

The most popular tags on a product are promoted to its Steam page, allowing others to find it and any similar products by searching for that tag. All products start with a default set of genre tags defined by the developer, but may be eclipsed in relevancy by community issued tags.

To compliment this new feature, Valve has added a section to the Steam Store providing the ability to browse by popular tags and filter your search for specific tags. You'll also have the option to view recommended tags, based on your interests.

Since Steam is a global platform used in many different countries, in many different languages, Steam Tags will reflect that diversity. Tags added in any given language will only be displayed to users running Steam in that same language. This furthers Valve's apparent global mindset, which plans support 12 new currencies this year.

"We want to ensure that it is easy for customers to find the particular types of games or software they are looking for," said Valve developer Al Farnsworth. "With this new feature, we are providing another powerful tool to help organize and browse products on Steam."

The feature is currently in Beta, but immediately available to all 75 million Steam users. Note that the initial categorization "might be a bit off" until the system becomes fully optimal.

Brandin Tyrrel is a freelance writer who used to make games before jumping ship to cover them. There's absolutely no reason to follow him on Twitter.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com