Vertical capsule specification
| Requirement | What to deliver |
|---|---|
| Canvas | 748 × 896 px |
| Aspect | Portrait |
| Placement | Can appear at the top of the front page during seasonal sales, and on other sale pages |
| Content | Game logo and artwork only |
| Text | Game name and any official subtitle only; no review scores, awards or discount copy |
A capsule is one of the fixed-size images Steam uses to represent your game across the store and library. The vertical capsule is the store set's major aspect-ratio change.
A horizontal key visual cannot simply be centre-cropped: characters at opposite sides disappear, wide scenery loses context, and a logo designed for a corner may collide with the subject.
Recompose rather than crop
Use the same visual system as the other capsules, but rebuild the hierarchy vertically. Stack logo, subject and supporting environment; do not squeeze them. If the horizontal composition depends on a face-off between two characters, create a diagonal or layered portrait arrangement rather than preserving both at unreadable scale.
Sale pages place many games together. The comparison set is not only your direct genre rivals but every neighbouring promotion tile. A distinctive silhouette and controlled colour block usually survive that environment better than small narrative details.
Design checklist
- Start at 748 × 896, working from Valve's current store-asset template pack.
- Identify the one subject that must survive a narrow portrait crop.
- Place the logo where it stays legible after the capsule is scaled down.
- Keep important faces, weapons and UI-like motifs away from the edge.
- Remove all text except the game name and any official subtitle.
- Review the image beside a grid of other vertical capsules, not by itself.
- Check visual continuity with the horizontal store assets.
Use the guide to Steam capsule art for the complete delivery set and the shared art principles.
Common vertical-capsule mistakes
- Centre-cropping the horizontal artwork and losing the subject or logo.
- Treating the portrait canvas as a poster and adding taglines, awards or release text. A marketing tagline is not an official subtitle, so it falls under Valve's closing rule of "no other miscellaneous text" even when it is built into the logo lockup.
- Making the logo small because the source file looks large on a design monitor.
- Producing an unrelated composition that breaks recognition across the store set.
Sources: Valve's own Steamworks documentation on store graphical assets and graphical asset rules, checked September 2026.
