Earlier this week, Valve made an unexpected but far-reaching change to their tagging system.

First they codified some neologisms like “Bullet Heaven” as official tags. Then they also removed some tags that were either supplanted by more mainstream tags.

These mainstream tags included removing “Roguevania” since most people say “Metroidvania”, or meta tags typically involving a game engine or how it was produced. For instance GameMaker and Crowdfunded are both gone as tags.

It makes sense to me that Crowdfunded, Kickstarter, Web Publishing, and some of the vague tags were removed. After all, how a game is released is less important than how it was developed. But in that case, why remove engine tags like GameMaker or most notably RPGMaker?

For those who don’t know, RPG Maker is a series of tools released by Enterbrain and Kadokawa (via Gotcha Gotcha Games). It’s a surprisingly versatile tool originally intended for traditional turn-based Japanese RPGs. But for anyone even passingly familiar, it can do so much more.

You may have even played an RPG Maker game without realizing it. Did you pick up a survival horror game like Ib, The Witch’s House, Mad Father, or even Corpse Party?

Maybe you’re a fan of the gruesome or artsy RPG series Fear & Hunger or OFF? That was also RPG Maker. There’s even hundreds of RPG Maker games on platforms like DLSite, I know what you are.

My point is, RPG Maker is a tool with depth and allows for creativity beyond what many assume are its limits. As such, the tool has dedicated users, but also dedicated fans.

It’s fun to see what limits can pushed in the confines of the program, it’s fun to seek out niche horror games that follow a familiar control scheme. So with Steam removing the RPG Maker tag, these games are going to be drowned out in the wider genres.

I love Ib and Corpse Party. But to find more RPG Maker horror games will I now have to dig through bottom-of-the-barrel jumpscare asset flips? I’m not alone either, PC Gamer recently released an article saying that the tag’s removal was welcomed by the community, but from what I can see that’s far from the case.

Admittedly, there’s something to be said about the stigma of RPG Maker. While I’ve spent the last few paragraphs praising its versatility, to many people the tool is conflated with low-effort releases.

So while it can turn off a casual player just browsing aimlessly, it was still a worthwhile tool for enthusiasts. If you’re already using a tool like RPG Maker, aren’t the enthusiasts the people you’re aiming for anyways?

So yes, in a way this change is a win. It’s a win for RPG Maker devs who just see the tool as the lowest barrier of entry, but it’s a loss for anyone who wants to experience the potential of the engine.

For fans of games that have released over the past several decades that push what should have just been a turn-based RPG tool into something much, much, more.

Luckily, there’s a workaround and using SteamDB you can search games by Engine. It’s not as convenient, but the tenacity of fans will endure.