Steam gets new game 'Tag' feature for improved browsing and discovery

Steam, the popular game distribution platform, will now enable the users to browse their favourite game titles on the Steam Store, based on tags created by users themselves, for an easy, quick and accurate search.

"Just visit the Steam Store page for your favourite game or software and apply tags that you think are appropriate or relevant to that title. Tags that are applied frequently will become featured categories, helping everyone discover products through a new set of genres, themes, and attributes defined by you and the rest of the community," mentions the Steam website.

The inclusion of new tags by the users over the existing ones will help them narrow down their search to a great level as compared to a search via Steam's limited 10 genre-based browsing tabs. For instance, if a user wants to search for a game like State of Decay, a zombie shooting game, instead of searching through genres like Action, RPG and others, one can simply search with Zombies, Survival, Levelling and other tags associated with the game by other users. One can add other tags also like, Shooting, Difficult or any other which the user thinks is appropriate for the title.

The Tag feature in Steam is currently in beta mode, as the firm needs to gather data into its system before the feature becomes truly useful. Valve also says the tags applied by the user will be set in the same language in which their Steam client is set to. Those tags will be only visible to those users who will be operating with the same language.

Valve also says once users search the Steam Store via tags, they will be filter results to help narrow their search. Filter controls will include categories (such as single player, co-op, MMO) and features (such as Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards, and Full Controller Support).

By introducing the tagging feature, the Steam Store is expected to become more interesting and search-friendly. There is no word as to when this beta feature will be converted into a fully official one