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How do you handle Steam Library Organization

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I have a bit of an Organization complex and Steam has gotten out of hand. Approaching 1000 games now and trying to figure out how to organize it all. I had it all organized by Genre such as Action, Racing, FPS etc but one day Steam said screw your categories and deleted them. Right now I am using a much simpler less detailed method that follows a smaller amount of categories such as Completed, Archive, Queue and No Interest. I'm basically dumping most of my 1000 games into the No Interest area but my OCD still kicks in wants a more in-depth system.

How do you guys manage it?

I'm thinking of maybe doing it based on games rankings or AAA vs Indie etc.

Side note: Do you keep games installed? I have about 4TB HDD and about 2TB of SSDs. With Steams new move function I'm thinking of keeping most everything installed on the HDD and then just move it to an SSD when I want to play it.
 
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My categories: priority, secondary, classics (favorite completed games), crap (will never play/gave up), meh (might consider if feeling curious, but otherwise gave up). Also some specific to a series, all legacy of kain grouped together, all star wars grouped together).
 
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Have you treated categorizing via Publisher/Developer. That more or less worked for me on the console but I have no idea how practical that would be on steam.
 
Arkage said:
My categories: priority, secondary, classics (great completed games), crap (will never play/gave up), meh (might consider if feeling curious, but otherwise gave up). Also some specific to a series, all legacy of kain grouped together for example.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea on grouping series together. I think in my old method some games could easily land in multiple categories so it made things more complex.
 
Twinsanity said:
Have you treated categorizing via Publisher/Developer. That more or less worked for me on the console but I have no idea how practical that would be on steam.
Click to expand...

I think for the more mainstream games but when it comes to Indie devs that could get out of hand. I don't usually play many indie games but now and then I do. I could just dump indie games into their own area and call it a day.
 
GeForce Experience, Beta, Early Access, multi-player only, backlog, completed. I also still have an 'high end' category I created when I had a pretty poor PC and wasn't able to run games at an adequate enough framerate.
 
I've long since given up on organizing my Steam library. I just click on "Recent" to see what's newest/played soonest, and relegate most of the old stuff to history. I have a ton of old games installed that I'll never play again, but I keep them installed...just in case.
 
I do it way easier. One categorie for favorites that I might want to play again. One for games I still want to play. And one where I just dump in every game I'm done with and don't need to see again.
 
I just moved all the games I plan on playing "soon" in one folder at the top and the rest in the default section.

My SSD is only 500gb so I'm always uninstalling/reinstalling stuff. When I build my new PC I'm for sure buying a TB SSD.
 
I Favorite the games I play regularly so they appear at the top. Also have three hard drives; an NVMe for games I play often and currently, an SSD for games I don't play as much but still play, and a huge mechanical drive for the rest.
 
My favorites list is currently games I am playing and things that are meant to be played from my backlog. Everything else is a giant mess and I am slightly embarrassed that I am lazy refusing to find the time to organize.
 
I use the tool called depressurize (I think that's the name) and then just sort by genre with some additional groups like co-op, single player and mmo.
 
Genres. Favourites list for currently installed/playing. I did have an extra "completed" but it just seemed like a silly idea.

FYI, you can remove things from your library if you have a ton of junk you know you're never going to play. I need to sit down and do that one day.
 
Favourites, games and junk.

Favourites is self explanatory, the games category is everything else, junk contains games I got for free somehow and betas that I don't intend on playing.

I delete games I don't play from my harddrive. I have a laptop, so the largest capacity HDD I can fit is a 2TB one, and I need that space for other files as well.
 
Damage Inc said:
I have a bit of an Organization complex and Steam has gotten out of hand. Approaching 1000 games now and trying to figure out how to organize it all. I had it all organized by Genre such as Action, Racing, FPS etc but one day Steam said screw your categories and deleted them. Right now I am using a much simpler less detailed method that follows a smaller amount of categories such as Completed, Archive, Queue and No Interest. I'm basically dumping most of my 1000 games into the No Interest area but my OCD still kicks in wants a more in-depth system.

How do you guys manage it?

I'm thinking of maybe doing it based on games rankings or AAA vs Indie etc.

Side note: Do you keep games installed? I have about 4TB HDD and about 2TB of SSDs. With Steams new move function I'm thinking of keeping most everything installed on the HDD and then just move it to an SSD when I want to play it.
Click to expand...
I organise mine by genre. Why did Steam delete your categories?
 
There is no point in organizing with how shit the current client is (no drag and drop and subcategories, no proper tree structor etc).

So what I do is sorting everything into 4 catergories. AAA, Indie, Early Access, Trash. Favourites is used for games that I am currently playing.
 
My categories so far are:

Replayable any time - games like Path of Exile, Monster Hunter, Darkest Dungeon... Basically any game that I find myself going back to over and over again.
Backlog - self explanatory
Finished - self explanatory
Finished but might replay - Games get moved here from Backlog if I think I may play them again in the future.
Multiplayer - Mostly competitive MP games in here like CS:GO, R6 Siege, Rocket League etc.

And all the rest are in the default category that's perma collapsed. That's where bundle trash ends up.
 
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Favorites - for things playing often
Controller - For those compatible with controller
VR - Kinda automatic

Everything else is pretty unorganized under "Games" and that's with over 350 games. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
Not a big problem, as you can just go to Installed to see what you've got Installed and despite being many games it's easy to browse to imo.
 
I once had my categories deleted somehow. Really sucks

I have my favourites and next-to-play-backlog categories. Other than that I try to do it by what I feel the genre is. Then do more detailed categorising when it gets a little to bloated.
It's been over 2+ years since I actively used Steam every day, so the ocassional titles I buy and play for a short while are all piled up at the bottom, uncategorised. Atleast I know that's the "newer" pile, lol
 
My categories:

- Finished
- Console (games that I also bought on console and will probably play them there)
- Playlist (things that I intend to play soon)
- Abandonware (Games I know I'll never play or started playing and hated)
 
Huh, I've never actually thought about this. I have always just let it list games alphabetically by defualt.

I have just over 400 though, it does become a pain to choose something different.
 
By genre, some games have multiple genre categories, games i haven't played yet stay in the "Games" category, game list stays sorted by "Recent" 99% of the time.
 
The Steam client is an horrendous pile of shit of a UX that hasn't much changed for nearly 15 years.

So yeah it's pointless trying to organise your library, not that there are any functions besides hiding or favoriting to even do it.
 
Pretty sure there was some third party interface that was in development years ago that looked nice. Wouldn't mind seeing if that made any more progress.
 
I generally just sort by genre (JRPG, Action, Shooter). I'll throw multiplayer games in their own section. After imaging my PC I've got no organization at all but I also only keep like 10 games installed so it's not super needed.

On my PS4 I just moved to a Japanese and Western folder. The Japanese folder includes anything Asian though like Detention.

Might organize my steam library now though.
 
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Shotgun blast of thousands of games, none of which I'll probably ever get to.

In all seriousness though, for me it's just "Favorites" (aka "Currently Playing") and "Everything else". Steam stores category data locally and I've had that data lost / corrupted more times than I could count, so I don't really categorize things anymore.
 
I split them into 4 categories:

  • finished
  • crap- stuff I abandoned due to various reasons
  • ancient - games which i played a lot years ago (usually pre-steam era) and have no desire to return to them or which are too ancient to be enjoyable now
  • obsolete - stuff that got new version/remaster released
Everything else is uncategorised until I play it

I keep only installed games visible by default and only switch to other views when looking for something
 
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After all the Humble Bundles I quickly started to use the "Set Category>Hide from list". Humble Bundle is wonderful, but it gave me a lot of games that I'll ignore for all eternity. I see things like Thomas Was Alone or Sid Meier's Pirates/Railroads/Ace Patrol and they're games I want to keep around for the sake of maybe playing more of them someday. There were a lot of games I got in a $1 bundle or for free from a friend that I'll never play. We could probably make a spreadsheet and compare the list and I bet a lot of the games are from Humble Bundles.

Games like Strike Vector or Strike Suite Zero are in my library and I know they are fun games to play, but Strike Suite Zero has newer versions and I feel like I am playing an older/outdated version of the game.

I have my Favorites and then everything else. A lot like jshackles jshackles has his. I recently did a fresh install, so I'm slowly starting to get back into my list.

I like to hide vanilla versions like DMC4 or Dark Souls 2. I'll keep SotFS and I own DMC4SE on PS4. In terms of Star Wars games, it would be nice to have a Star Wars section. I only have Dark Forces II installed at the moment.
 
I only have like 150 so its not a lot. I just have a folder for finished games that I will most likely never play again and I put finished games there.
 
* MP/Infinite - Games I always dip in and out of
* Finished - derp
* Must play - games I really want to play
* Should play - good/great games according to other ppl
* Unfinished - dumping ground

I think i will take a chainsaw to the unfinished category and filter out all the shit I'll never care about into a new 'Arse' category. Maybe delete them from my account if they aren't tied to a bundle with good stuff. a big issue is that even 'must play' + 'should play' is like 100 games. maybe cut some of those too. Gotta be ruthless.

edit: fuck, can't call it arse, thats my ME2 category.
 
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Easy.

- Finished
- Played (but didn't finish)
- To play (games I wanna play)
- Multiplayer
- Indie (bunch of random shit in there)
- Why? (why the fuck do I own this)
- No intention. (I wouldn't play this if you paid me)
 
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Let me see, my categories are as follows: -

Favourites (Anything I'm currently playing)
Adventure (2D/Point & Clickers)
Episodic (Telltale style games)
Finished (Donezo's)
First Person (Anything FP gets put in here, shooter, RPG)
Indiecurious (TBH anything that excludes other categories)
Interactive Fiction (Choice of Robots style games)
Isometric RPGs (Baldurs Gate/PoE etc)
Puzzles (Lyne, The Witness, Braid, Inside etc)
3rd/1st person RPGs (Skyrim, KCD, TW3, Dark Souls etc)
Strategy (CK2, Stellaris etc)
3rd Person (Tomb Raider, Assasins Creed, etc)

It might seem bit weird to mix stuff up that way (some things straddle a couple of categories), but I find it useful to apply the perspectives to things because often my mood and attention levels dictate the style of game I want to play. Strategy and Isometric are lean in games that require being sat close to the screen and M&K. Whereas with say No Mans Sky or a Tomb Raider I kind of lean back and play with the controller (which often after a long day at thePC I'm inclined to do).

You need to think of categories like tags. A game can have more than one.

Also once something is finished, I removed all the other categories from it and uninstall it.

I try and just view what's installed also rather than worry about what's not.

Anyway, hope that at least gives you some inspiration.
 
Kadayi said:
Let me see, my categories are as follows: -

Favourites (Anything I'm currently playing)
Adventure (2D/Point & Clickers)
Episodic (Telltale style games)
Finished (Donezo's)
First Person (Anything FP gets put in here, shooter, RPG)
Indiecurious (TBH anything that excludes other categories)
Interactive Fiction (Choice of Robots style games)
Isometric RPGs (Baldurs Gate/PoE etc)
Puzzles (Lyne, The Witness, Braid, Inside etc)
3rd/1st person RPGs (Skyrim, KCD, TW3, Dark Souls etc)
Strategy (CK2, Stellaris etc)
3rd Person (Tomb Raider, Assasins Creed, etc)

It might seem bit weird to mix stuff up that way (some things straddle a couple of categories), but I find it useful to apply the perspectives to things because often my mood and attention levels dictate the style of game I want to play. Strategy and Isometric are lean in games that require being sat close to the screen and M&K. Whereas with say No Mans Sky or a Tomb Raider I kind of lean back and play with the controller (which often after a long day at thePC I'm inclined to do).

You need to think of categories like tags. A game can have more than one.

Also once something is finished, I removed all the other categories from it and uninstall it.

I try and just view what's installed also rather than worry about what's not.

Anyway, hope that at least gives you some inspiration.
Click to expand...

I wish they had actual tags imported from the store and had some sort of organization by default.
 
Damage Inc said:
I wish they had actual tags imported from the store and had some sort of organization by default.
Click to expand...

Think about it like this. It's like sorting your sock drawer. It takes a while initially, but once it's done, maintaining it is pretty easy.

Don't make 10 categories straight away. Instead, just make one, then work through your game list and add any applicable games to it. Then create your next category and do the same with the remainder, Rinse repeat. You'd be amazed how quickly you'll get all your categories set up doing things that way.
 
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I don't, I usually don't keep a lot of games installed because I never play 50 games at the same time, so I usually have the few games I'm currently playing installed and some other special ones that I like to keep, but I currently have only around 20 games installed and I only display installed games in my library, so not really any need for organization.
 
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With 1200+ Steam games, it was getting difficult to manage even with genre categories, so I had to take a step further and also included genre sub-categories or even series when there are at least 3 or more games in that series.

Excerpts from the format I use...

act - 3p - Batman Series (action 3rd person since there is a limit to category name length)
act - 3p - GTA series
action - 3rd person
action- side scroller
action - top down
adventure - gabe knight series
adventure - myst series
fps - sci-fi
fps - arma series
fps - bioshock series
fps - survival
racing - combat
racing - rally/off-road
racing - rally - dirt series
rpg - dungeon crawler
rpg - gothic series
rpg - sci-fi
simulation - general aviation
simulation - sea
strategy - act of war series
strategy - historical
strategy - sci-fi
_early access

etc.

It makes it easier to tackle backlog as well with this level of organization, although it was tedious to set up the first time.
 
This took me way longer than I wanted, and there's some games that fit in multiple categories "A puzzler, action, racer with RPG elements". One plus though, is that I discovered a shit ton of games that, while I knew I had them, I didn't know what kind of game they were. Red Orchestra 2, wtf is that? I see it in my list all the time. Oh, its an FPS, nice.

ejd7ZCr.jpg
 
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I don't.

The only games I keep perpetually installed are the Total War games. Everything else I just look for the ones that are highlighted instead of grey. It's actually kind of fun to go through my library. "Wait, when did I get that game?"
 
Some games have issues with HDD larger than 2 TB. Eg some japanese arcade ports like Arcana Heart 3, KO2002UM, Psychonauts, Monkey Island Special Edition, Assasins Creed 2 etc

They do not run at all or run with grahic errors or missing music

I have a smaller separate HDD for the above
 
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