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Steam Capsule Images: Every Size and Where Each Shows

Steam requires four capsule images, not three — and if the guide you are reading was written before November 2024, every dimension in it is wrong. Valve announced doubled sizes for all four store capsules on 7 August 2024, and the previous dimensions lost support on 1 November 2024.

Here are the current sizes and, more usefully, where each one actually appears:

Capsule Size Where Steam shows it
Small 462 × 174 Search results, top sellers, new releases — the lists players browse
Header 920 × 430 The top of your own store page, “Recommended For You”, Big Picture
Main 1232 × 706 The carousel across the top of the Steam store home page
Vertical 748 × 896 The front page during seasonal sales, and sale pages

Steamworks marks all four as required. You also need at least five screenshots at 1920 × 1080 or larger in 16:9, and you can optionally supply a page background at 1438 × 810 — skip it and Steam generates one from your last screenshot.

The small capsule does the discovery, and it gets shrunk to 120 pixels

This is the part that should change how you work. Steam takes the 462 × 174 small capsule you upload and automatically generates two smaller versions from it: 184 × 69 and 120 × 45.

One hundred and twenty pixels wide. That is the image in front of a player scrolling search results, Top Sellers, or New Releases — every list where somebody who has never heard of your game might find it. Your header capsule, meanwhile, sits at the top of your store page, which means nobody sees it until after they have already decided to click.

So the test is not “does my capsule look good.” The test is: export the small capsule, scale it to 120 pixels wide, and look at it on a phone held at arm’s length. Can you read the title? Is there one shape you can still identify? If not, the art is not finished, however good it looks at full size.

This is also why designing the big one and downscaling fails. A composition with three characters, a landscape and a logo resolves into grey mush at 120 × 45. Design at 120 first, then add detail upward.

If you want examples, this is also how to study them properly. Open Steam’s New Releases list — which renders capsules at exactly this size — rather than looking at store pages. The capsules that survive that view are the ones worth learning from.

The vertical capsule is required, and you cannot crop it out of the others

Plenty of developers skip the vertical capsule because it is described as a sales asset. It is still listed as required, and at 748 × 896 it is the only portrait capsule — taller than it is wide, while every other one is a wide rectangle. No crop of your header art will fill it. It needs its own composition, which means it belongs in your artist’s brief from the start rather than the week a sale is announced.

The rules that get artwork rejected

Valve’s asset rules are short and specific. The one developers most often get backwards:

Your capsule must contain a readable product logo or name. The rule requires it. Atmospheric art with no title on it does not pass.

Everything else is what is forbidden:

  • No review scores of any kind, including Steam reviews or external news sources
  • No award names, symbols, or logos
  • No discount marketing copy — no “On Sale Now”, no “Up to 90% off”
  • No text or imagery promoting a different product, and that explicitly includes sequels and other titles in your own franchise
  • No other miscellaneous text
  • Artwork must be PG-13 appropriate

Read that last bullet strictly, because it is broader than it looks. “Wishlist Now”, an Early Access flash, your studio logo — all of it is miscellaneous text. Steam’s interface already displays your price, your discount, your review score and your release status next to the capsule. Putting them in the art duplicates the UI and spends the only space you control.

There is one sanctioned exception. Steam lets you temporarily override capsule artwork to announce an update, a seasonal event, or DLC. Those overrides are capped at one month, and the text has to be localised into every language your game supports.

What developers get wrong

Trusting an out-of-date template. This is now the most common failure and the hardest to notice, because a template from 2023 looks exactly like one from this year. Check the date on any template, size generator, or guide before you build against it. If it does not mention the November 2024 change, treat its numbers as stale.

Polishing the wrong asset. Effort spent on the header capsule reaches players who already clicked. Effort spent on the small capsule reaches players deciding whether to. Most developers have that backwards, because the header is the one they look at every day.

Putting the title where the art is busiest. Legibility at 120 pixels comes from contrast, not from font size. A white logo over a bright, detailed background disappears when the image is scaled down, even when the letters are large.

Art that does not match the game. The capsule sets an expectation your screenshots have to meet about one second later. A polished 3D render over a pixel-art game is not a stronger pitch — it is a pitch for a game you are not shipping.

Treating it as finished at launch. You can replace capsule art afterwards. If your page collects impressions and no clicks, the capsule is the cheapest thing you can change and the most visible.

A worked example

Here is the same idea run through this site’s copy generator. The game below is made up, but the copy is the real, unedited output — not something written for this article.

Tidebound Orchard — cozy survival farming

In Tidebound Orchard, you cultivate a floating garden that rises and falls with the ocean’s tides. Plant crops only during low tide and harvest before the saltwater returns, using tide charts and weather forecasts to plan your growing seasons. The hook is balancing your orchard’s buoyancy by planting heavier root vegetables to anchor it during storms, and lighter flowers to let it drift into sunnier currents.

Tagline

Grow a garden that breathes with the tide.

Steam short description (204 / 300 characters)

Cultivate a floating orchard that rises and falls with the ocean. Plant at low tide, harvest before the salt returns, and balance your garden’s weight to ride out storms and drift toward sunnier currents.

Suggested tags

Cozy · Farming Sim · Survival · Building · Singleplayer · Pixel Graphics · Indie · Sandbox · Atmospheric

You can run your own game through it in about thirty seconds: Steam store copy generator. It is free and needs no account.