Steam Guides are player-created manuals that can help you discover a game's secrets, teach you how to mod games, provide some fun facts, and much more besides.

In this aticle, we'll tell you everything you need to know about Steam Guides, including what they are, how to find them, how to view them, and how to create your own.

What Are Steam Guides?

Are you stuck in a game and need a walkthrough? Hunting for all the achievements and want to know how to get them? Looking for some pro-level tactics? Want to know how to set up and remap your controller?

Steam Guides offer all of this and more. They are free player-created resources that provide support on a game.

Guides can contain text, screenshots, and videos, and can be split into categories so that you can jump quickly to the section you need.

Whereas in the past you might have hunted online for a walkthrough or bought a strategy guide, the chances are now that someone has already written a Steam Guide that will help you out.

And if they haven't, it's easy to create your own Steam Guide.

How to Find a Steam Guide

There are various ways to discover Steam Guides, and you don't need to own a game to view its guides. Here's how to find Steam Guides.

To see all the guides:

1. Open the Steam client.
2. Click Community.
3. Switch to the Guides tab. You can sort this by Most Popular and Most Recent.

That's fine if you want to get a feel for guides, but the chances are you want to read one for a specific game.

To find guides for a game you don't own:

1. Open the Steam client.
2. Click Store.
3. Navigate to a game page.
4. In the top right, click Community Hub.
5. Switch to the Guides tab.

Alternatively, if you already own the game:

1. Open the Steam client.
2. Click Library.
3. Select a game.
4. Click Guides.

Finally, there's an even easier route if you're already playing the game through Steam:

1. Launch a Steam game.
2. Open the Steam overlay. By default, this is Shift + Tab.
3. Here, there's a Guides section that shows the top-rated guides, which you can click to view them.
4. Otherwise, click View All Guides to browse all guides for the game you're playing.

This method only applies to games bought or redeemed through Steam, rather than non-Steam games you added to the client.

Related: How to Remote Play Together With Anyone on Steam

How to Navigate a Steam Guide

When looking at a guide, use the Guide Index on the right to skip to specific parts.

At the top, you can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. This influences the star rating of the guide; the higher the rating, the greater the guide's visibility in search.

You can also spend Steam Points to give the author extra praise with a badge, favorite the guide so it appears at the top of your Guides page, share the guide to social media, or report it for violating the Steam online conduct rules.

At the bottom of the guide, if the author has enabled it, you can leave comments. Check Subscribe to thread if you want to receive notifications whenever someone posts a new comment.

How to Create a Steam Guide

If you want to help out your fellow gamers and share your expertise, you should create a Steam Guide.

To do this:

1. Navigate to the game's Guides page, as detailed above.
2. On the right-hand menu, click Create Guide.
3. Enter the title for your guide.
4. Click Choose file to upload a square image to represent your guide. It must be a minimum of 195x195 pixels.
5. Input a Description for your guide. You can use markup texts for formatting—click Formatting help to see the available options.
6. Assign your guide a Category (you can select multiple) and Language.
7. Check to confirm you are the original creator of the guide, or have authorization to post it.
8. Click Save and Continue.

This will take you to the next page, where you fill out your guide's contents. You can always edit this later on, though you must at least have some content in place before you can publish.

To populate your guide, on the Guide Contents page:

1. Add all the Images that you want to use in your guide. You can also use any screenshots or videos that you've already uploaded to Steam.
2. Add a contributor if you want your friends to help you create the guide. It'll appear on their Guides page once you've completed setup.
3. Add a section to create your first section of the guide. A table of contents will generate automatically from this.
4. Click Edit this section.
5. Here, define a Section Title and input the Section Contents. Use the toolbar to apply formatting, and use the right-hand menu to embed images and videos.
6. When you're ready, click Save.
7. Repeat steps three to six as much as necessary. You can drag and drop sections to re-order them. Click Delete this section to remove it and the content within entirely.
8. When you're done, click Preview Guide. This will show you how the guide will appear when published.
9. When you're happy to set the guide public, click Publish Guide.

You can return to your guide at any time. To do this, go to the Guides page and you'll see a new link on the right-hand menu called Guides you've made.

Once the guide is live, beneath Owner Controls, you can Change Visibility to set who can see the guide: public, friends-only, hidden, or unlisted. You can also return to the different editing pages and disable comments, and Author Stats shows you how many people have viewed and favorited your guide (of course, these numbers might take a while to increase).

You can also Delete the guide if you want to remove it from Steam permanently. This cannot be reversed, so back up the guide elsewhere if you want a record of it.

Steam Is an Excellent Games Store

That's everything you need to know about Steam Guides. So why not give creating one a shot and help out your fellow gamers?

Steam isn't without its flaws, but there's a reason it's the go-to platform for PC players. Features like Steam Guides, the vast library of games and software, and regular sales all make Steam stand out against its competitors.