Valve have announced the Steam Store Browse experiment, offering news ways to discover games.

As part of the Steam Labs initiative, users can opt into the new experimental view of Steam; showing games divided among 48 genre and eight theme categories.

Some of these categories of genres and sub-genres include action rogue-like, walking simulator, dungeon crawler, JRPG, and simulation’s physics & sandbox. Themes include “choices matter,” female protagonist, horror, sci-fi & cyberpunk, and LGBTQ+. Other themes mentioned in the developer blog include “cute” and “relaxing.”

The categories and themes were inspired by Steam Curators who had made similar lists, “Gameplay and genre-based lists like City Builders, theme-based lists like Games with Dogs, or player mode-based lists like Games to Play with Your Significant Other.” 

As such, Valve based these new genres and theme categories from existing tags, metadata, “a mix of formal research and intuition.”

However, what was not mention in the developer blog was that Steam profiles that enable viewing adult only games will see an adults only category on Steam. Steam had originally edged away from adult content, before finally stating in 2018 that it would “allow everything” on Steam other than “trolling” or illegal content.

Each category has its own hub, with catagories for New & Trending, Top Sellers, and more- much like the current Steam store overview. This can be further narrowed down with popular tags.

The Steam Store Browse experiment also has a “New & Noteworthy” menu, providing a more general overview of games that are doing well in the Steam charts, have special events, or publishers sales for them.

Users who partake in the experiment will be able to leave at any time, and offer feedback from the Steam website, or installed on their computer.

What do you think of the Steam Store Browse experiment? Will you be taking part? What could they do better? Sound off in the comments below!