Do you overthink your Steam categories or are you normal?

I'm late to the party, but I've categorized them by year. If I feel nostalgic, I just browse the top of the list.

There are categories? My 446 entries are just kind of there, alphabetically.

Steam has categories?

Man, calling them "backlogs" seems like a very unhealthy way of thinking about it. They're games you play for fun and enjoyment, not work you're behind on.

My categories are: Games I shall play one day: just all the games I haven't given a fair shake yet and would like to get around to at some point.

Games I am playing: games that I am actively playing, usually with some activity within the last month

Games I am done with: games I no longer want to play for whatever reason. Used to be "Games I have completed" but that didn't make much sense with multiplayer games or roguelikes, and it worked better for games I hadn't completed and just could not be arsed to complete.

Free games: games I have gotten for free and so have no plans to play.

Also have one for online multiplayer games and one for local multiplayer for when friends want to play something

Most of the time tho I just use the sort by recent and only installed bittons since those are the games I want to see anyway

Steam user since the early days, and no categories here. Why bother. Thousands of games, too much work.

Same thing with profiles, like what do I need that shit for?

Edit: I do want to say, I admire your organization.

..... New Years resolution to say something nice a lot more often, we call could use it ......

I’m surprised I didn’t see it mentioned here (unless I missed it) but I use the “hide game” function liberally. Anything I’m not interested in, gave up on with no chance of trying again, completed with no desire to revisit, or won’t touch for any other reason just goes away, out of sight. It helps give a real sense of progression through your collection and you can pare it down to favorites you would likely revisit and things you have yet to play. And the hidden tab is easily viewable if you ever want to look at everything for any reason like rethinking putting a particular game in there.

i have 3 categories:

hentai

not hentai

stupid

I would do this.

And then only play Rocket League.

The majority of backlogs being in "other" is because you bought hundreds of games you don't remember buying or what genre they are, right? 😆

mine is just

• Favorites
• Multiplayer games my girlfriend also has
• Everything else

Thank you for giving me inspiration of what to do with that feature!

Thats a lot of categories. I've got "current", "Done with", "never again" and the uncategorized, since functionally that is my backlog.

I'm migrating away from steam and starting my library over.(Moving away from accounts and drm) So in the future my library will only have games that I have actually played and will play.

Yeah I'm buying games twice but no one likes captain hindsight.

I go by main genre - so Action, Adventure, RPG, ARPG, Rhythm, VR, you get it.

Then a Beaten, Beaten 100%, Shelved, "The Bin", and a "Multiplayer" category. Games are allowed in multiple categories. The Bin does not hold many games, you've gotta earn being thrown in the trash.

That way, when I think, "I wanna play a Rogue Like" I don't have to recall all their titles or anything. Then my Steam Deck came around and the default big picture view makes my sorting... Mostly useless.

I think that's part of why you have a backlog.

In all seriousness though, I have a couple lists for like "Workshop" and "Souls like," otherwise it's just sorted by what's installed and most recent.

I do have a favorites list though.

I currently have it sorted by year (I used some year date from Steam, but that isn't super accurate as I think it's the date it was added to Steam). I think I used Depressurizer?

I used to have it sorted by the Steam score, IIRC.

I have an _installed, a backlog in general, genre based dynamic categories, and a few special categories such as "bad games that should feel bad", "broke shit check for patch later" "GFWL Broken" and "games of lost interest"

I could never be this organized, but good for you tbh

Categories? I don't use categories. Just a single giant list! Also, I never clear out my email inbox and let it pile up into the thousands! And no one can stop me. MWHAHAHAA!

I stopped doing that after the first few hundreds... Now I'm at >5000 or so and only do a "bought to actually play" category 😁

I tried, but dynamic filters were not good enough, so i gave up.

Only have "Ready To Play", "All Played" and "Uncategorized" now.

Only one custom category for the best indie games.

But I dont really need it since I uninstall games I dont play and my library view is filtered to installed only:

No I already have a full time job.

I just have a finished one where I move them after I finish the story or I'm done with a game.

And here I thought I had a huge backlog.

Yes, I've got then by genre, completed, to be played, "butt ugly indies" and "devil's lettuce approved"

Guess I'm kinda normal. I just install what I wanna play, filter by playable and store by last played.

I categorize them based on their franchise. But if they're not part of any franchise or they're the only game I have they'd just be uncategorized.

I think I must use them wrong.

My categories are mostly used to organise by where they're installed - so Desktop, Laptop, Steam Deck Internal, Steam Deck SD Card 1, SD Card 2 etc. If I want to play that game, where's it already installed?

The only category that relates to the games content is "wheel games" which is driving games that work well with wheel/pedals/gearstick.

Whoa I don't even know you can categorize steam games like this, thanks for showing

• To Play
• Finished
• Unfinished (games I gave up on)
• Time Sink (unending games, roguelikes, etc)
• Multiplayer
• Multiplayer (5+)
• Local Multiplayer

I actually like that... Mostly I have categories for genres, publishers, and planning for playing (not like I actually follow it...) but I like some of yours and will probably adopt them

I just sort by recent and that's it 🤷‍♂️ if it falls off and I forget about it, I guess it's gone

I dont have this many lists. I keep mine as finished, currently playing, broken and then some dynamic lists based on category such as rougelike, horror etc

It would be cool to see an export of that game list by category.

Dunno if steam has any way of doing that

Goals. Holy, I know what I'm doing tomorrow instead of gaming.

I just have unplayed, installed locally, and good games.

I often forget to update the good games folder so it's iffy as to whether or not all of my good games are in there yet at any given time.

Shooting boomers is not very nice.

Well my list is this:

• installed shit
• all

Smart move, you're playing Game Categorization, the Game for free on Steam’s dime.

TIL there are Steam categories

I have over 300 games in 2 categories:

• Favourites
• Uncategorized

My list is just my entire list, sorted by installed and recent. No folders, no organisation, just a very long list

I don't use them

• Installed
• Finished
• VR
• Borked Anti-cheat
• Everything else

I am in awe of your organization.

my dad's garage is like this

I was playing this game too much, with complex system which never actually encouraged me to play any of the games I have categorized (and I had similar system as OP). Please dear fellow gamers - don't fall into same trap =)

Now I have only 4:

• WTP - want to play games, be them new or on repeat.
• VR - same as WTP, but for VR.
• Done - for games which are finished, but I have a feeling that I would like to recall them several years later.
• Done-done - for games which I'm not going to ever play again. Either bad games, or which have fully fulfilled their purpose and there is nothing to do anymore.

I use recent sorting, which help a lot to mitigate any kind of lock on what to play today. It's more like recommendation

I am trying to free myself from finishing games 100% and avoid all side/boring activities, also now I'm free to pick whichever game I want, instead of planned (like work) consumption with previous system.

It has really brighten my playtime, now it feels more like joy than before.

I'm not organizing 1200 games. Nor will I ever play them all lol.

Ooh, emojis? The possibilities!

• Favorites
• Backlog
• Completed
• Uncategorized

I have an "immediate backlog" of 5 games, about 30 in my "primary backlog," and about 60 in my "backlog." I promote or demote based on vibe and try to play 1 game at a time. I also have a tight curation of favorites and Steam Deck bangers.

I only have 3: -TO PLAY -BANGERS -Uncategorized

I feel you bundley pain. I have: favourites, check in future/ early access, completed, currently paying, deck games, escape rooms, games for my wife to try, horror, humble games to try, local multiplayer, multiplayer, new need to try, played kinda sucked, puzzle, RPG, RTS, shooter, sofa games, VR games.

New need to try is for the humble bundle games I'm actually interested in and the humble games to try is for the ones which are just extras.

Poor VR, all the way at the bottom below shovelware.

I am somewhat bad about organizing on Steam. All I have for categories are pretty much games I got for free, paid for indie titles, paid for non-indie titles, and emulators. Would be better if I better organized them, but I wouldn't know where to start and would most likely procrastinate on it indefinitely because of the number of things I have in library.

I just sort my library by rating to see what I'll play next.

I don't use categories, but I do keep a tab open with this loaded with my Steam ID. It uses all the tags games have on Steam so you can see if you have a 2D Sci-Fi Souls-like if you want.

So what are the 4 Souls-likes in your backlog?

I categorise them by genre, but only those I've played. Everything else is unsorted and my backlog is whatever I have installed and uncategorised.

Why would you sort the ones you're uninterested in?

I sort mine by genre, plus a couple categories that overlap with others like "Space" or "No Killing" because sometimes I get in the mood for a particular quality. I don't have an active category, instead I uninstall games that I don't see myself playing in the near future and then use the "Ready to Play" button to see the active ones. Installing games encourages me to do something else, and the limit on how long it'll be helps, "Do chores for an hour while your game installs" is a lot easier for me than just "Do chores." Ideally, I try to limit my installed games to 10 so that I think more about what I actually want to play, I'm not always disciplined about it.

How is your early access category so small?