What should a Steam store page have at announce, before there is a demo?

Title, genre tags, capsule art, a trailer, screenshots or GIFs, and a description. That is the minimum viable page. Spend the effort on the capsule, since average indie capsule click-through sits below 2% and titles clearing 4% earn more discovery visibility.

What do I need to change on my store page for Steam Next Fest?

A fresh gameplay-first trailer, and the short description plus key features localised into Simplified Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Spanish and French. Enter only with 1,000 or more wishlists and 10 or more organic wishlists per day; under 500 wishlists or fewer than 5 per day is a reason to wait for a later cohort, since a game can appear in Next Fest only once.

When should I write the About This Game section?

Launch week is when it starts paying. It is the below-the-fold layer, confirming interest rather than creating it, so it matters most once the capsule and trailer are already pulling qualified traffic. Two or three GIFs showing what the carousel does not, plus one or two statics for UI and progression screens, is the working shape.

What your Steam store page needs at each launch stage

The four stages at a glance

Stage	Priority layer	Done looks like
1. Announce	Pre-landing	Minimum viable page complete, capsule survives the thumbnail tests
2. Demo available	Above the fold	Gameplay-first trailer, five compliant screenshots, explicit wishlist prompt
3. Steam Next Fest	Above the fold, refreshed	No red readiness signal, fresh trailer, localised short description
4. Launch week	Below the fold	About This Game answers how much game there is and whether quality holds

The priority order comes from the funnel, not from a checklist

A store page has three layers.

Pre-landing (capsule art, title) decides whether anyone arrives.
Above-the-fold assets (trailer, tags, short description, first two or three screenshots), everything visible without scrolling on a 1080p monitor, decides whether they stay.
Below the fold (About This Game copy, GIFs and statics, community proof) decides whether they commit.

An unfinished About This Game section costs little while nobody is clicking the capsule, but a weak capsule caps everything downstream. Element-by-element detail is in our guide to how to optimise your Steam store page. For when the page should first go public, see when should you launch your Steam page.

Stage 1: announce, page live, no demo

The minimum viable page is title, genre tags, capsule art, a trailer, screenshots or GIFs, and a description. Nothing else earns its keep yet.

Spend the effort on the capsule: two elements only, the title and one key visual. Test it at thumbnail size three ways.

Blur it. Does the shape still read?
Strip it to greyscale. Does it still separate without hue?
Set it beside the top five games in your genre. Is it distinguishable?

Average indie capsule click-through sits below 2%; titles clearing 4% earn meaningfully more visibility in Steam's discovery queues and search. Our free Steam capsule analyser scores a capsule 0 to 100 across the six dimensions those tests approximate, which is a faster first pass than eyeballing it.

Fill all 20 tag slots, top five clearly describing the game, since unused slots reduce discoverability for nothing. Enable and monitor the Community Hub, the discussions and announcements space attached to your game, before the page goes public. There is no published wishlist threshold for leaving this stage, so judge it on asset quality.

Stage 2: demo available

A demo shifts the burden to the above-the-fold block, because visitors now have a decision to make on the spot. Three things change:

Trailer. Open with 30 to 45 seconds of core gameplay, unusual mechanic in the first five seconds. Steam shows the first two valid trailers ahead of screenshots and builds the six-second microtrailer from the first visible video, so order is a real decision.
Screenshots. At least five at 1920 x 1080 minimum in 16:9, actual gameplay not concept art, each showing a distinct system, environment, UI layer or progression moment.
Wishlist prompt. Add an explicit one: demo downloads do not convert into main-game wishlists on their own.

Stage 3: the Steam Next Fest window

Next Fest amplifies momentum rather than creating it, and a game can appear only once, so readiness matters more than eagerness. Published benchmarks put the effect at a 3x to 10x lift in wishlist velocity, with total wishlists and recent growth rate the strongest predictors. Immutable's readiness bar:

Signal	Green	Yellow	Red
Total wishlists	1,000 or more	500 to 999	Under 500
Organic wishlist velocity	10 or more per day	5 to 9 per day	Fewer than 5 per day

Any red signal is a reason to wait for a later cohort. Then cut a fresh trailer, and localise the short description and key features into Simplified Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Spanish and French, since store-page localisation tends to beat in-game localisation on wishlist impact per dollar. The festival playbook is in how to win at Steam Next Fest.

Stage 4: launch week

This is the only stage where below-the-fold work is the priority, because the traffic arriving now is asking how much game there is and whether the quality holds. Answer it with:

Two or three in-text GIFs showing what the carousel does not, at 1170 px wide, under 12 seconds each.
One or two statics wherever a readable frame is the point, such as skill trees or UI.
Total screenshot and GIF weight under 15 MB.
A launch trailer, plus an audit of player-applied tags, which drift and can be removed if inaccurate.

For a stage-agnostic pass over every element, work through the Steam store page checklist.

Sources: Steamworks documentation on store graphical assets, screenshots, trailers, tags and Steam Next Fest eligibility. Immutable's store-page guidance for the three funnel layers, capsule tests, Next Fest readiness thresholds and localisation priority. Capsule click-through and Next Fest velocity figures are directional benchmark data, not audited results.