How to Choose Steam Tags (and Why the Order Matters)
By the Cosindra team · Updated July 26, 2026
Tags are the closest thing Steam has to telling the algorithm who your game is for. They feed search, tag browse pages, the discovery queue, and — most importantly — the "More Like This" section on other games’ pages, which is free real estate on titles your audience already owns.
Yet a large share of indie pages use half their slots or fill them with wishful tags. Both cost real visibility.
Use all 20 slots — but order them deliberately
Steam weighs your earliest tags most heavily, and the first handful effectively define your game to the recommendation systems. A good ordering:
- 1–3: primary genre ("Roguelike", "City Builder", "Horror").
- 4–8: subgenre and defining mechanics ("Deckbuilding", "Base Building", "Bullet Hell", "Turn-Based Tactics").
- 9–14: themes and setting ("Post-apocalyptic", "Fantasy", "Cyberpunk", "Historical").
- 15–20: mood, art style, structure ("Atmospheric", "Pixel Graphics", "Story Rich", "Singleplayer", "Controller").
Tag for the game you shipped, not the game you dream of
Aspirational tagging — adding "Souls-like" because you’d like those players, or "Multiplayer" for a mode that isn’t in yet — actively hurts. Steam’s systems learn from behavior: if the audience a tag brings doesn’t wishlist or buy, your game gets shown less. The wrong thousand visitors are worse than the right hundred.
Steal your comparables’ homework
Open the five games most similar to yours and read their tag lists (the full list is behind the "+" on their store pages). The overlap between those lists is your core tag set — those are the tags Steam already associates with your audience. Then add the handful of tags that make you distinct.
Niche tags are underrated
Broad tags ("Action", "Indie", "Adventure") put you in oceans you can’t win. Specific tags ("Roguelike Deckbuilder", "Cozy", "Automation", "Fishing") put you on browse pages small enough that a new game actually surfaces. Keep the broad genre tags for classification, but expect your traffic to come from the specific ones.
Want an honest score for your page?
LaunchKit grades your Steam store page 0-100 — AI vision looks at your actual capsule and screenshots, checks your description and tags, and gives you a prioritized fix list. Paste your store URL, or grade a draft before you publish.
Grade my Steam pageFrequently asked questions
How many tags should my Steam game have?
All 20. Empty slots are discovery you’re leaving on the table — the last slots cost nothing and still feed browse pages and recommendations.
Can wrong tags hurt my game on Steam?
Yes. Tags that attract an audience who then bounces teach Steam’s recommendation systems that your game underperforms, which reduces how often it gets shown. Accuracy converts better than reach.