Valve updates Steam Tags feature to curb abusive and offensive tags

An update to Steam's new tagging feature, released in beta earlier this week, now lets users report popular tags that may be inappropriate, unhelpful, offensive or abusive.

On Steam game pages, users can now click a flag icon to report a tag to Valve, which will downvote the tag, according to a post from Al Farnsworth on the Steam beta client group. Users can flag a Steam tag as "offensive/abusive," "not appropriate for this product," "not a helpful tag" or "spoiler."

"In general, tags need to be applied by more users before they will show on the popular tags section," Farnsworth wrote. "Please keep the feedback coming, we're continually working to improve the feature."

In the post's comments, Steam users suggest that, like Steam Reviews, tagging should be limited to games people have played through Steam.

Valve launched Steam Tags in beta earlier this week, and some users took advantage of the discoverability feature to post offensive and derogatory tags, including some that were abusive to the developers of those games. Polygon has reached out to Valve about its efforts to improve Steam Tags but has not yet received a response.