Steam capsule art: sizes, rules and what actually gets clicks

Your capsule shows up everywhere someone meets your game on Steam: search results, the Discovery Queue, recommendation rows, wishlists and sale pages. Most of those impressions are tiny, and the shopper decides in a fraction of a second whether to click. Nobody reads a short description they never clicked on, so the capsule controls everything else on your page.

Steamworks currently asks for these store capsules (Valve raised the sizes in August 2024, and the old dimensions are no longer accepted):

• Header capsule: 920×430. Top of your store page, recommendation rows.
• Small capsule: 462×174. Search results, top sellers, new releases and most lists. Steam auto-generates 184×69 and 120×45 versions from it.
• Main capsule: 1232×706. The front-page carousel.
• Vertical capsule: 748×896. Seasonal sale pages.

There are also library assets (600×900 capsule, 3840×1240 hero, logo). Check the current templates in the Steamworks docs before you export.

Since September 2022, Valve's graphical asset rules say store capsules may contain only your game's artwork and its logo (plus a subtitle if you have one). No review quotes, award laurels, discount text or "Early Access now" banners. Capsules that break the rules can be excluded from featuring in Steam sales and events. For time-limited messaging, Valve offers Artwork Overrides, which expire automatically.

Valve's own guidance for the small capsule is that the logo should be readable even at the smallest size, which usually means the logo nearly fills the frame. If it works at 120×45, the bigger sizes almost always work too. In practice:

• Have one focal point: a character, a vehicle, an icon. Not a collage.
• Keep high contrast between the logo and the art, and add an outline or shadow if the background is busy.
• Use a chunky, simple logotype. Thin fantasy scripts turn to mush at thumbnail size.
• Make the genre obvious. A shopper should be able to guess "cozy farming" or "tactical shooter" from the capsule alone.
• Match your screenshots. If the capsule promises something the game doesn't show, people will bounce.

Before launch, shrink your capsule to 120×45 next to competitors in your genre and ask people who don't know your game one question: "What kind of game is this?" After launch, compare impression-to-visit click-through in your Steamworks traffic stats before and after a change, ideally during a high-traffic window such as Steam Next Fest.

Run a free WishlistLab audit. Our vision model looks at your real capsule and tells you whether the logo and genre survive at small sizes.