Your Steam store page: capsules, screenshots and the first three seconds

The capsule sizes, current

Valve raised most of these in 2024, so a lot of guides and templates still circulating are wrong. Check Steamworks for your own submission, but as of now the upload sizes are:

All five accept JPG or PNG up to 2MB. There are additional library assets, including a wide hero image and a logo, which only existing owners see and which are worth doing properly because that is the image players look at every time they open their library.

Design for the smallest one

The small capsule is where most players meet your game, and it is displayed far smaller than you will design it. Almost every capsule mistake comes from judging the artwork at full size.

1. Design the logo to be legible at thumbnail size, which usually means a simplified lockup rather than the full logo with tagline. The rules are in game logo design.
2. One focal subject. A character, a vehicle, a single striking shape. Not a scene, not a cast photo, not a collage.
3. High contrast against the Steam background, which is dark. A dark capsule with a dark logo disappears in a dark list.
4. No small text. Taglines, review quotes and feature lists are unreadable and look like clutter.
5. Test it at 25 percent zoom, in a grid with other games' capsules, on a phone. That is the actual viewing condition.
6. Do not reuse the same crop across all five. The proportions differ enough that a single artwork stretched to fit reads as unconsidered in at least two of them.

Screenshots, in order

Screenshots are the second thing looked at and the most under-designed asset on most pages. The order matters because most visitors see the first two or three.

• First screenshot: the game at its most characteristic. Not the prettiest vista, the most recognisable moment of play.
• Second: what the player does. The verb, visible.
• Third: the system that gives it depth, which is usually a screen with interface on it.
• Then variety: different environments, modes, enemies, so the page implies content volume.
• Show the HUD. Screenshots with the interface stripped out look cleaner and lie about the game, and players notice on refund day.
• Use 1920 × 1080 or larger, and keep them consistent in aspect and treatment.
• Avoid text overlays unless they are genuinely doing work. Steam already provides a description field.

The trailer's first six seconds

• Gameplay immediately. Logo stings at the front lose viewers who did not ask for a brand.
• Show the loop before the story. Most viewers are deciding whether they want to do this, not whether they want to know about this.
• Cut for the muted viewer. A meaningful share of views have no sound, so the picture has to carry it.
• Under 90 seconds for most games, and front-load everything.
• End on the title and the wishlist call, held long enough to read.

The words on the page

The same discipline that applies to interface text applies here: the reader is scanning, under no obligation, and will leave. That is the words in your game applied to a shop window.

Wishlists, and why the page goes up early

• Wishlists accumulate over months, so a page that goes live two weeks before launch has collected almost nothing.
• Put up a Coming Soon page as early as you have one good capsule and three good screenshots. It can improve later; it cannot collect wishlists before it exists.
• Every marketing action points at the page. Festivals, posts, press, streamers. Without a page, that traffic goes nowhere.
• Update it as the game improves. Capsule, screenshots and description are not carved in stone, and a page built at slice quality should be replaced at launch quality.

Other platforms, same discipline

• Mobile stores are icon-first, and the icon is smaller and rounder than any Steam capsule. Everything in this article applies harder.
• Console stores have their own asset matrices, usually including several vertical formats and a hero image.
• Itch and other PC storefronts are more forgiving of format but not of legibility.
• Design the artwork so it can be re-cropped, with the focal subject away from the edges and the logo available as a separate layer at several lockups.

The capsule is the only part of your game that has to work at one hundred and fifty pixels wide, and it is the part that decides whether the rest is ever seen.

A store page audit

1. Put your small capsule in a row of competitors at real size. Does it stand out, and can you read the title?
2. View the header capsule on a phone.
3. Look at your first three screenshots only. Do they say what the game is?
4. Check whether the HUD is visible in any of them.
5. Read your short description out loud. Does it say what the player does?
6. Check your tags against what players in your genre actually browse.
7. Watch your trailer's first six seconds with the sound off.
8. Check every capsule size against the current Steamworks requirements.
9. Check the library assets, which existing owners see most often.
10. Ask someone unfamiliar with the game what it is, after five seconds on the page.