Steam overhauls tags, removing 'NSFW' & 'Mature' for being too general

A group of 28 tags, some of which overlapped with more descriptive topics, were removed. Meanwhile, tags like Bullet Heaven, Espionage, and Capybara were added.

by · Shacknews

Valve has rolled out an update on how game tagging is handled on the platform, removing 28 tags that were either not used appropriately or were too general. That included “NSFW” and “Mature,” which had users concerned, but Valve believes other, more descriptive topics fill these roles better. We also have “Capybara” as a tag now among 13 more new ones.

Valve put out a Steam Community Update earlier this week detailing the changes to its tagging system. “These changes are made with the goal of helping players identify the games that best fit their interests, and helping Steam generate appropriate recommendations,” the developers wrote. Among those changes are the removal of 28 tags that Valve felt were not serving their purposes well enough. Tags like “Mature,” “NSFW,” and “Well-Written” were considered to be too general, while tags like “Drama” and “Ambient” just had too little going on to warrant their current use. Others like “Warhammer 40K” and “LEGO” were retired in favor of their franchise pages.

Steam's removed tags include a number of general terms like "Blood," "NSFW," "Well-Written," and "Mature," for which other, more descriptive tags exist.
Source: Valve

The list of tags removed are as follows:

  • 3D Vision
  • Ambient
  • America
  • Blood
  • Crowdfunded
  • Cult Classic
  • Documentary
  • Drama
  • Dungeons & Dragons
  • Electronic
  • Experience
  • Feature Film
  • Foreign
  • GameMaker
  • Games Workshop
  • Illuminati
  • Kickstarter
  • LEGO
  • Masterpiece
  • Mature
  • Movie
  • Narration
  • NSFW
  • Roguevania
  • RPGMaker
  • Warhammer 40K
  • Web Publishing
  • Well-Written

Meanwhile, 14 tags were also added to help boost discoverability and add fun options if they apply to a game. Here they are:

  • Bullet Heaven - The opposite of Bullet Hell; Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies
  • Desktop Companion - Games that only use part of your screen and keep you company while you do other things
  • Organizing - Tidy up, de-clutter, or unpack, carefully placing items in virtual spaces
  • Cleaning - Satisfying removal of grime and dirt from stuff
  • Decorating - Creative placement of furniture and other objects
  • Wuxia - Historical fantasy adventure featuring martial arts, competing sects, and inner qi
  • Xianxia - Fantasy adventure focused on cultivating supernatural powers and strength
  • Falling Blocks - Arranging, rotating, and placing blocks from above
  • Espionage - Spying or secretly securing valuable intel
  • Samurai - Japanese warriors best known for katanas, loyalty, and self-discipline
  • Zoo - Care for and display a park full of wild animals
  • Wolves - Also known as Canis Lupus
  • Capybaras - The largest and possibly most adorable rodent species
  • Animals - Cute and furry, or large and terrifying and everything in between
  • Cult - Small groups with extreme devotion to a person, thing, or belief
  • Poker - Draw, bet, and bluff
  • Language Learning - Learning and teaching new languages

There were some users which were concerned about the changes to the “NSFW” tag, especially with August 2025’s shenanigans when Mastercard was alleged to have put restrictions on gaming platforms, said to be the cause of abrupt “NSFW”-tagged games on Steam and Itch.io. Steam even exposed that Mastercard did, indeed, involve itself in attempting to put restrictions on game platforms due to pressure from its own payment processing partners.

With the “Mature” and “NSFW” tags going away, it seems that particular point of contention may become more nebulous, but the reasoning and support of better categorizing topics like “Adult” from “Gore,” for instance, stands to make everything more identifiable. As we cross our fingers for the first ever tagged Bullet Hell Samurai Capybara game, stay tuned to the Steam topic at Shacknews.

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