Steam tries a broader category menu to make it easier to find new games

Valve has rolled out a new Steam Labs Experiment that can help narrow down your choices if you’re looking for new games to play. If you opt into the Steam Store Browse Experiment, you’ll get access to a new way to browse the titles available on the platform. To start with, all new releases and popular titles can now be found under one menu marked “New & Noteworthy,” which will also display Steam events, such as game festivals and publisher sales. Even better, the experiment gives you access to a new and more extensive categories menu.

Its basic list of genres is no longer enough given how large its catalog has become, Valve admits, so it designed a new one with 63 new categories to make discovery easier. Valve divided the new categories into three entry points: Genres, Themes and Social & Players. The experimental Genres section is much more extensive than Steam’s usual, populated with sub-genres under main ones to make results as specific as possible. The Themes entry point groups titles based on the games’ content — Space, Horror and LGBTQ+ are three examples. Finally, Social & Players surfaces titles based on who you can play the game with, so you can quickly browse MMO games or find ones that offer Online Competitive and Multiplayer modes.

Further, each new category takes you to a dedicated landing page and content hub with its own URL that you can bookmark and share with friends. Valve says its new genres and themes came from user tags, while the player modes under Social & Players came from data provided by developers. It’s now relying on user feedback to refine the new browsing experience and categorization before rolling it out to the public.