What Steam Capsule Art Has to Do: 2026 Sizes and Valve's Rules, Choosing and Briefing an Artist, Testing Without an A/B Tool, and Wishlist Conversion Data

On Steam, most players first meet your game through a single capsule image, not your store page. Search results, new release lists, recommendation rows, sale pages, and even wishlist discount emails all show the capsule before anyone clicks, and without the click nobody sees your trailer or your description. The competition gets denser every year. Depending on the tracker, between 20,008 (SteamDB) and 20,558 (GameDiscoverCo) games were released on Steam in 2025, the most of any year.

Yet capsule art is one of the least discussed assets in budget meetings. It looks smaller than a trailer or a publishing deal, and it is easy to assume the art team can simply crop the key art. This post treats the capsule as an ad creative that Steam runs for free inside its own store. As of October 2026, it walks through Valve's official sizes and rules, designing for small sizes, who to hire and what to pay, what goes into a brief, how to validate a capsule when Steam offers no A/B testing tool, and how often wishlists actually turn into sales.

We covered how wishlists shape launch performance in Steam Wishlists Decide Your Launch. Here Is How to Build Them Before Day One, and why preparation before the event decides the outcome in Steam Next Fest Marketing. This post focuses on the one asset both of those only touched on: the capsule. The October 2026 Steam Next Fest starts today, October 19, and runs through October 26, which is exactly when capsule click-through shows up most clearly.

Where Does Steam Capsule Art Work in the Funnel?

Capsule art sets the rate at which the impressions Steam is already giving you turn into store visits and wishlists. It is less a device for getting more impressions than a device for deciding how much interest you recover from the impressions you get.

The distinction matters because of how Valve describes visibility. Steamworks documentation states that the traffic landing on your store page is not a factor in your Steam store visibility, and neither is the conversion rate of visitors who go on to purchase. What Valve does describe as a strong signal is players buying and playing your game. So a low click-through rate does not make Steam show your game less, but if the same impressions produce fewer visits, wishlists, and purchases, you hand the algorithm fewer of the signals it does respond to. The capsule sets the base for every step after it.

The capsule appears in more places than most teams realize. The main capsule sits in the carousel at the top of the store home page, the small capsule appears in search results and in new and top-selling lists, the header capsule tops the store page and appears in recommendation rows, and the vertical capsule is used at the top of the front page during seasonal sales. Valve also notes that the main capsule is used in wishlist emails, which means the first image a wishlister sees in a discount email is your capsule.

There is now also a path from capsule to wishlist that skips the store page entirely. In an analysis posted on How To Market A Game on October 13, 2026, game marketing consultant Chris Zukowski points out that Valve added a wishlist star to the tooltip that appears when you hover over a capsule, so players can wishlist a game without visiting its store page, and argues that this has made wishlists closer to bookmarks. More wishlists added from the capsule alone is one more reason the capsule has to promise the game accurately. We come back to this in the wishlist conversion section below.

In the same visibility documentation, Valve notes that some customers may need to see your game dozens of times before it catches their attention. A capsule does not need to win the player in one look; it needs to be recognized as the same game every time it is seen.

What Are the Steam Capsule Sizes and Valve's Rules in 2026?

As of October 2026, the store requires four capsules, header, small, main, and vertical, plus a separate set of library assets. Valve moved most capsules to larger sizes in August 2024, and the old dimensions are no longer accepted. Pre-2024 size charts still circulating online will get you stuck at upload.

The content rules have been in effect since September 1, 2022. Base capsules are limited to game artwork, the game name, and any official subtitle. No review scores of any kind, whether from Steam reviews or outside outlets, and no award names, symbols, or logos. No discount copy, no marketing copy asking the user to take an action such as wishlisting, no text or imagery promoting a different product such as a sequel or another title in the franchise, and no other miscellaneous text. Valve states that games that do not comply may have limits to their visibility in the store and are ineligible for featuring in official Steam sales and events. If you want to show awards or press scores, they belong in the store page body, not on the capsule.

The only way to put text on a capsule is an Artwork Override, which swaps in temporary capsule images between a start and end time you set and reverts to the defaults automatically. The rules are specific. Text may only describe new content currently available on Steam, such as a major update, a seasonal event, a battle pass, or DLC, and text about updates or events must be uploaded as an override with a length limit of one month. Any text must be localized into at least the same set of languages the game supports, and calls to action or date copy such as "Wishlist now!" or "Available Oct 4th," as well as discount copy such as "On Sale Now," are prohibited on overrides too.

Valve's guidance assumes base capsule art generally should not change, with anything time-sensitive handled through overrides. In practice, that means scheduling overrides against the event and sale calendar in advance. When pairing an override with a discount, Valve's tip is to start the override five minutes before the discount begins so the new art is picked up by wishlist emails. Wishlist discount emails go out only when the discount is 20% or more, affects at least the lowest-priced package, and lasts longer than eight hours, and users who received any email about your game in the past two weeks will not get another.

How Do You Make a Capsule That Reads at 120×45?

The first test of a good capsule is whether the logo reads and the genre is obvious at the smallest size. Valve notes that the small capsule is scaled down automatically to 120×45 and 184×69, and that because the logo must stay readable even at the smallest size, it should nearly fill the capsule. That is the size at which most players first see your game.

The most common failure is shrinking key art that was finished at full size. Details that look great at 1232×706 turn to mush at 120×45, and a thin logotype simply disappears. Reversing the order is safer: settle a composition whose silhouette and value contrast survive at the smallest size, then add detail for the larger capsules. Valve also says small capsule art does not need to match the other capsules, so it is common to make the small capsule a separate, logo-led crop.

Genre signaling is the second test. Players skimming a list glance at a capsule, decide whether it is their kind of game, and move on. Whether it is a pixel-art roguelike, a cozy farming sim, or a co-op horror game should come through in palette, character proportions, and composition before anything else. Following genre conventions on purpose is a legitimate strategy. Speaking the same visual language as the genre's top games gets you recognized quickly by that genre's fans, while a completely different language may stand out but pull clicks from the wrong people.

You can check this cheaply. Put 10 to 20 capsules from popular and recent games in your genre on one screen at actual Steam list size and drop yours among them (a competitor grid test). Convert the capsule to greyscale and see whether the logo and subject still separate (a greyscale test). Show it for one second to someone who does not know the game and ask them to name the genre and mood (a one-second test). All three cost almost nothing, and they let you give an artist specific feedback such as "the logo gets lost against the background in the grid" instead of "it feels weak."

The last test is consistency across sizes. Header, small, main, vertical, and library assets should share a palette, logo treatment, and character rendering so that a player who runs into the game dozens of times across different surfaces remembers it as the same game. If you are used to comparing click-through across mobile ad creatives, the cases discussed in What Is a Good Ad CTR for Mobile Games? 2026 CTR Benchmarks by Channel, Format, and OS, and When a High CTR Misleads apply directly to capsules. A capsule that gets the right people to click beats a capsule that simply gets the most clicks.

Who Should Make Your Capsule Art, and What Should It Cost?

The deciding factor is less the budget than whether the artist has made capsules before. Chris Zukowski notes that not all artists are good at capsule art and suggests looking at the capsules of successful indie games in your genre and asking those teams whether they would share their artist. Illustration skill and the ability to compose something that reads at 120×45 are different skills.

On cost, it is worth saying up front that there is almost no published standard rate. The public reference points we could verify are a 2020 How To Market A Game post estimating that a good-quality capsule costs about $500-1,000, and individual freelancer listings such as "starting at $100 per capsule illustration." The 2020 figure is likely low for today, and listings vary widely in what they include, so the accurate way to compare is with quotes broken down by scope.

Write the brief before you request quotes. Without a brief, the artist paints something beautiful and the studio keeps repeating that "something feels off." We recommend putting the following on one page.

Deciding your questions for artists in advance makes them easier to compare. How many Steam capsules have you made, and which of those games have shipped? Do you compose the small capsule separately? Will you show a 120×45 preview and a competitor grid at the concept stage? How many revisions are included? What do additional sizes or seasonal overrides cost? What source files and commercial usage rights transfer? Do you use generative AI tools in your process? That last question matters for rights, and also because Valve's content survey assumes the game will be consistent with its marketing materials, so you want to avoid imagery that is far removed from what the game actually looks like.

Steam Has No A/B Testing Tool. How Do You Validate a Capsule?

Steam does not offer a native A/B testing feature like Google Play's store listing experiments or the App Store's product page optimization. The realistic approach is to combine sequential comparisons using Steamworks traffic reports with external comparisons using UTM links. For how the mobile stores' testing tools compare, see What Do App Store Optimization Services Actually Deliver for Games?.

Start with the exact definitions. In Steamworks' "Store & Steam Platform Traffic Breakdown" report, impressions are tracked when your game brand is displayed on screen to a player, and Valve notes this does not guarantee the player has seen your game. Visits are unique page loads of your store page, and the click-thru rate is the percentage of impressions that result in store page visits. Some impressions, such as pop-ups about a friend playing your game, do not link to the store page, so their click-through cannot be measured. Since March 23, 2021, impression and visit reports also exclude users who have opted out of the applicable cookies.

Design a sequential comparison like this. Lock two to four weeks of pre-change click-through by traffic source, plus wishlist additions per visit, as the baseline. Then run the new capsule for the same length of time with nothing else changed, and compare. Leave out any period with an event that changes traffic composition, such as a sale, Next Fest, a major update, or streamer coverage. Since Valve says traffic and conversion rate are not visibility factors, teams hesitant to experiment can take some comfort that trying a new capsule will not by itself cost them impressions. That said, Valve's guidance assumes base capsules do not change often, so limiting changes to once or twice a quarter and not using overrides as a testing tool keeps you within the rules.

External comparisons complement the sequential approach. Use two capsule variants as creatives in the same ad channel or community, send traffic to the store page with links whose utm_content value differs by variant, and Steam UTM Analytics will split visits and 72-hour wishlists and purchases by variant. Players browsing Steam lists and users on an external channel are in different contexts, so use the result to confirm direction rather than as a direct transfer. It works on the same principle as mobile ad creative testing, so if you have a mobile UA team, it is the fastest method to start.

There are cases where one capsule changed the outcome dramatically. In an indie case covered by How To Market A Game in 2020, the developers replaced only the capsule about a year after Early Access launch, and daily sales went from 0-3 copies to 40-60 copies and stayed there. The developers said nothing else changed at the time, but it is a single game, the causal link rests on the developers' account and timing, and it happened in the Steam of 2015. What it shows is not a number but a possibility: the capsule can be the bottleneck between impressions and clicks.

How Often Do Steam Wishlists Actually Turn Into Sales?

Wishlist conversion figures vary a lot with the metric definition and the sample, so read them as ranges and spreads rather than one average. Valve itself says there is no formula to accurately predict sales from wishlists.

The spread matters more than the average. GameDiscoverCo summarizes the range as varying "by 10-20x, not 10-20%" from project to project. In the same analysis, the under-converting games had a median Steam review score of 67% (Mixed) seven days after launch, against 91% for the top 20, and they had spent an average of 411 days on Steam before launch versus 214 days.

Zukowski's 2026 analysis argues that each wishlist is worth less than it used to be, while also showing that wishlists still predict sales well. The R² between wishlists at launch and first-month sales was 0.77 for 2020-2022 and 0.72 for 2023-2025, not a meaningful difference. The two causes he proposes are the wishlist button in capsule tooltips mentioned above and the weak conversion of wishlists gathered during festivals. The GameDiscoverCo post also includes a developer reporting that wishlists from ads were of worse quality and converted into sales less effectively.

The data carries three implications for capsules. First, do not judge a capsule by wishlist count alone. With tooltip wishlisting, a capsule that promises something different from the game can still add wishlists, and those wishlists are less likely to become sales. Second, the more accurately the capsule conveys genre and mood, the more the people who wishlist overlap with the people who will buy. Third, using rules of thumb from around 2020 to set wishlist targets will overestimate first-week and first-month sales. If your launch price is above $10, a baseline around 0.10x is safer, and if festivals and ads make up a large share of your wishlists, go more conservative than that.

How Should the Funnel After the Capsule Be Designed? The Playio Perspective

If the capsule's job is turning the impressions Steam gives you into clicks, the next job is bringing interested players from outside Steam to your store page and making sure those wishlists turn into purchases and playtime. That is the stretch Playio's Steam product is built for.

Playio is a gaming community of five million gamers, where AI analyzes genre preferences, play history, and in-game behavior to connect games with players whose tastes match. For PC Steam games, the Steam product can set up each stage of the funnel as its own action: wishlist and follow, add to cart, purchase, playtime milestones, and achievement completion. As the data above shows, what matters now is less the wishlist count than whether those wishlists become purchases and play, and the core of this structure is that you can see purchase and playtime in the same campaign instead of stopping at the wishlist.

If you run it alongside capsule work, we recommend keeping the order straight. Finalize the capsule first and lock the Traffic Breakdown baseline, then route the external campaign only through dedicated UTM links and read it separately in Steam UTM Analytics. That keeps the effect of the capsule change and the effect of the external campaign from blending, and lets you check whether campaign wishlists become real purchases through the 72-hour attribution and the wishlist reports.

As a concrete next step, send your game's genre, Steam store page link, current wishlist count, launch or next Next Fest and sale dates, and the last four weeks of Traffic Breakdown click-through by source to [email protected], and we will send you a four-week wishlist pilot plan first: UTM structure, target actions and billing stages, and a decision rule based on purchase conversion rather than wishlist count.

You can find more details here. (https://playioadsen.oopy.io/bizdeck)

Key Takeaways

As of October 2026, Steam capsule art is a free ad creative inside Steam that sets the rate at which Steam's impressions become visits and wishlists. Valve does not treat traffic or conversion rate as visibility factors but does treat purchases and play as strong signals, so the capsule sets the base for those signals. The required capsules are header 920×430, small 462×174, main 1232×706, and vertical 748×896; since September 2022, base capsules may contain only artwork, the game name, and an official subtitle, with no review scores, awards, discount copy, or calls to action, and time-sensitive text is allowed only through Artwork Overrides limited to one month. Judge the design by whether the logo reads at 120×45 and the genre is obvious at a glance, choose an artist on capsule experience, and compare quotes by scope using a brief, since published rates are rare. With no native A/B tool on Steam, combine sequential comparisons of click-through by source with external comparisons through UTM links. The median first-week wishlist conversion is 0.15x (0.10x above $10), projects differ by 10-20x, and each wishlist is now worth less than it was, so judge both capsules and campaigns on purchase conversion rather than wishlist count.

For inquiries about Playio's advertising solutions, reach out at: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]?subject=Playio%20inquiry%20from%20blog%20-%20Steam%20capsule%20art%20guide)

Sources

• Steamworks Documentation, Graphical Assets Overview (capsule, library, and event asset sizes; larger sizes since August 2024, old dimensions no longer accepted): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/assets

• Steamworks Documentation, Store Graphical Assets (where each capsule appears; small capsule auto-generated at 120×45 and 184×69 with readable logo requirement; base art should generally not change, time-sensitive text via overrides): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/assets/standard

• Steamworks Documentation, Graphical Asset Rules (effective September 1, 2022; permitted and prohibited base capsule content; one-month override limit, localization, allowed text; visibility limits and ineligibility for sale and event featuring): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/assets/rules

• Steamworks Documentation, Artwork Overrides (main capsule used in wishlist emails; automatic revert; start five minutes before a discount; no discount or call-to-action copy): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/assets/overrides

• Steamworks Documentation, Wishlists (no formula to predict sales; launch notifications; discount email conditions of 20%+, lowest-priced package, longer than eight hours; two-week cooldown; daily wishlist reports): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/wishlist

• Steamworks Documentation, Visibility on Steam (traffic and conversion rate are not visibility factors; purchases and play are strong signals; customers may need to see a game dozens of times): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/visibility

• Steamworks Documentation, Traffic Reporting (definitions of impressions, visits, click-thru rate; unmeasurable impressions; cookie opt-outs excluded since March 23, 2021): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/traffic_reporting

• Steamworks Documentation, UTM Analytics (total, trusted, and tracked visits; wishlist, purchase, activation conversions; 72-hour attribution; conversions finalized four days after the visit; minimum thresholds): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/utm_analytics

• Steamworks Documentation, Upcoming Events (Next Fest October 19-26, 2026; Scream V Fest October 26-November 2; Winter Sale December 17, 2026-January 4, 2027; Next Fest February 22-March 1, 2027; Spring Sale March 18-25, 2027): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/upcoming_events

• Steamworks Documentation, Content Survey (scope of the AI-generated content survey; consistency between the game and marketing materials): https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/contentsurvey

• How To Market A Game, How many games were released in 2025 (January 8, 2026; 2025 Steam releases: GameDiscoverCo 20,558, Gamalytic 20,353, VGInsights 20,282, SteamDB 20,008): https://howtomarketagame.com/2026/01/08/how-many-games-were-released-in-2025/

• How To Market A Game, Wishlist inflation is real, but you still need them (October 13, 2026; 160 games; tooltip wishlisting; first-month sales per wishlist roughly halved; R² 0.77 vs 0.72; festival wishlists): https://howtomarketagame.com/?p=7127

• Inven Global, Steam wishlist inflation (October 15, 2026; reported chart values from the analysis above: first month 0.45 → 0.22): https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/27273/steam-wishlist-inflation-value-of-1-wishlist-cut-in-half-but-predictive-power-remains-unchanged

• GameDiscoverCo, The state of Steam wishlist conversions (October 17, 2025; median first-week conversion 0.15x, 0.14x excluding adult games, 0.10x above $10; 2024 poll 0.17x; 10-20x spread; review scores 67% vs 91%; pre-launch time 411 vs 214 days; developer comment on ad-sourced wishlists): https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/the-state-of-steam-wishlist-conversions

• How To Market A Game, How one new image increased sales 20-fold (April 13, 2020; daily sales 0-3 → 40-60 after a capsule change; good capsule about $500-1,000; how to find capsule artists): https://howtomarketagame.com/2020/04/13/how-one-new-image-increased-sales-by-20x/

• itch.io artist profile (starting at $100 per capsule illustration; an individual listing, not a market average): https://itch.io/profile/ink-blade