Steam Launches a New Festival Following a Community-Led Push
Awesome Games Studio, together with the organizers of Bullet Heaven Festival (held in December 2025), coordinated a community-driven initiative advocating for an official Steam tag - and broader visibility - for games like Vampire Survivors, Megabonk, Yet Another Zombie Survivors, and Halls of Torment. Steam took notice and announced an official festival for Bullet Hell and Bullet Heaven games, giving the bullet heaven genre its first real validation on the platform.
STORY OF THE INITIATIVE:
"What started as a simple question - what do we actually call this genre? - turned into a coordinated community initiative that reached far beyond what we expected.
We created a short video explaining the discoverability problem on Steam and launched a public poll asking players how they name and find bullet heaven games. We also shared the videos and poll directly on Reddit (starting with genre-specific communities like HoloCure, Brotato, Halls of Torment - and gaining even 100,000 views on each post), as well as on social media, encouraging both players and developers to take part. Over the course of two weeks, the discussion organically spread across subreddits, developer circles, and platforms, gathering more than 8,000 votes and hundreds of in-depth comments.
The momentum carried the initiative beyond community spaces and into major media outlets. The campaign and poll results were covered by PC Gamer, Destructoid, and Automaton, amplifying the conversation and clearly showing that this wasn’t a niche issue. Shortly after, Steam announced an official Bullet Fest event dedicated to Bullet Hell and Bullet Heaven games.
Bullet Fest 2026 is an official Steam event, not a third-party sale. That means significantly more visibility and obviously much bigger impact.
Even though we still don't have a dedicated Steam tag yet, the event page shows that Steam now asks developers who want to join the Fest whether their game is bullet hell or bullet heaven.
This suggests they might be collecting data they were previously missing, which means we may be getting closer to real improvements in discoverability and categorization." - Awesome Games Studio explains
ABOUT THE INITIATIVE:
Steam has a huge influence on how game genres are defined - and this fast-growing genre still doesn’t have a proper tag.
A Steam tag isn’t just for looks; it’s one of the most powerful tools for discoverability and helping players find exactly what they love.
A dedicated tag would:
Make these games easier for players to find
Help Steam’s algorithms actually match players with what they enjoy
Give devs fair visibility instead of drowning in unrelated categories
Finally unify a genre that currently has multiple different names