Valve Updates Steam Tags With “Bullet Heaven,” New Discovery Categories, and Major Cleanup

According to a new Steamworks announcement, Valve has refreshed Steam’s tagging system with a wide-ranging update designed to improve game discovery, storefront organization, and recommendation accuracy across the platform.

The overhaul introduces a variety of new gameplay, genre, and theme-related tags. Newly added categories include Bullet Heaven, Desktop Companion, Organizing, Cleaning, Decorating, and Poker. Valve has also expanded Steam’s thematic and setting-based tags with additions such as Wuxia, Xianxia, Samurai, Espionage, Zoo, Cult, and Language Learning. Animal-focused tags including Capybaras, Wolves, and the broader Animals category have also been added.

Commenting on the changes, Steam said:

“It has been quite a while since we last adjusted our tags, and we have been steadily compiling a list of tags to add and remove. We hope this update will help players more easily find the games they want based on the genres, themes, and styles they prefer.”
— Steam

Alongside the new additions, Valve also removed or consolidated 28 older, vague, or overly specific tags into broader categories. Tags removed from Steam include NSFW, Mature, Masterpiece, Well-Written, Drama, Ambient, Movie, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K, and LEGO. According to Valve, several of these tags overlapped too heavily with more precise alternatives already available on the platform.

A number of existing tags were also renamed or merged as part of the cleanup effort. Clicker has been renamed Incremental, while Conversation is now Dialogue Heavy. Other tags, including Dogs, Foxes, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and Assassins, were standardized into plural forms for consistency. Valve also merged Jet into Flight and Unforgiving into Difficult.

One of the most notable additions is the new “Bullet Heaven” tag, a term that has steadily gained popularity in recent years to describe survival-action games inspired by titles like Vampire Survivors. The label is increasingly being used as a more specific alternative to “Bullet Hell,” which traditionally refers to shoot-’em-up games focused on avoiding dense projectile patterns. This goes for titles like ones we reviewed such Pebble Knights.

Until now, many players referred to these games as “Vampire Survivors clones” or “Survivors-like” titles, similar to how FPS games were once labeled “DOOM clones” in the 1990s and difficult action RPGs later became associated with the “Souls-like” label. Whether “Bullet Heaven” eventually becomes the standard industry term remains unclear.