Valve has initiated a purge of tags on Steam, removing brands such as Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40,000, and LEGO. The measure aims to reduce redundancies that developers used to promote games. In an official post, the company detailed that many tags were completely deleted, while others were modified to better align with the actual content of the titles.
Technical debugging: redundant tags under scrutiny 🧹
The cleanup addresses a technical issue: tags like 'Dungeons & Dragons' appeared in games with no direct relation to the franchise, generating noise in searches. Valve replaced some with more generic terms, such as 'Tabletop RPG' for tabletop role-playing games. Others, like 'LEGO', disappeared because official brand titles already include the name in their description. The change affects the visibility of indie games that used these tags to attract traffic.
Goodbye to creative tagging: now you have to read the description 📖
Developers who tagged their puzzle game as 'LEGO' just because it had colorful blocks will now have to try harder. The community reacted with memes about strategy games tagged as 'Warhammer 40,000' for having a single soldier with large shoulder pads. Valve basically said: if your game doesn't have registered trademarks, don't use the tags. At least now searches will show what they promise, not what the devs wished for.