PC Gamer contributor Noah Smith declared near the end of 2023 that it was another great year for boomer shooters, but he had one request: boomer shooters are now officially a tagged genre on Steam.

The advent of the Boomer Shooter tag was noted by Andrew Hulshult, composer of soundtracks for Dusk, Amid Evil, Wrath, Aeon of Ruin, Professional: Aeon of Ruin, Prodeus, He worked on the soundtracks for Doom Eternal and others: in other words, he is a very well-known boomer-shooter-blogger.

"'Boomer shooter' is a lovably cheeky term that was used once when we developed 'Dusk' as a description for 'Doom,'" Halschult tweeted. 'So we used it as is because it's funny. The term would later spread to a whole genre of shooters. Now it's a category on Steam. I love this reality.

Steam users can define and apply tags to games however they want. You can literally go to any game's tag page and tweet random characters as tags. However, popular tags will eventually become "featured categories" on the Steam storefront, simplifying the process of getting that particular gameplay itch that caught you at that moment: there are currently 68 games in the "Boomer Shooters" category, and you can further divide them into various You can further divide them into genres, sub-genres, etc., according to your preference. Want a "casual" Boomer shooter, Steam says there are two: Devilated, which I haven't played, and Prodeus, which I have played.

The big change seems to have happened literally overnight: looking at SteamDB's update history for all games on the Boomer Shooter list, the "Boomer Shooter" tag was added across the board on January 4-5.

Steam's category page is still missing a few things: Serious Sam 3 VR and Serious Sam: for example, Serious Sam 3 VR and Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem are tagged as Boomer Shooters For example, Serious Sam 3 VR and Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem are tagged as boomer shooters, but Serious Sam 3 and 4 are not. The reason why is probably because the algorithm is still, well, algorithmic.

Or maybe they are struggling to understand what exactly a Boomer Shooter is: why does "High Hell" show up on the category page, but not "Hrot" - "our favorite gruesome Soviet Core Boomer Shooter"? Is it. ("High Hell" is great, but can it be considered a Boomer Shooter?) This category will continue to grow as Steam users add this tag to their overlooked favorites.

So congrats to all the great Boomer shooters and those who love them. Alas, 2025 will be your year.