HOW TO PUBLISH YOUR GAME ON STEAM

1. What you need before you start

• A build that runs. Not finished, but installable and playable from the main menu to a save. Valve launches it during build review.
• Legal name and address. You can publish as an individual or as a company. Whoever signs the Steamworks agreement is the one Valve pays and the one whose name is on the tax form.
• Tax details. US developers fill a W-9; everyone else fills a W-8BEN (individual) or W-8BEN-E (company) inside Steamworks. No accountant needed, the interview is guided.
• A bank account. Payouts go by bank transfer in your local currency where Valve supports it. Check that your country is on Valve's payout list before you pay the fee.
• Store assets. Capsule art, screenshots and ideally a trailer. Sizes are in section 3. This is where most first-time developers lose two weeks.

2. Steamworks account and the $100 Steam Direct fee

Steam Direct replaced Greenlight in 2017. There is no vote and no curation at this stage: pay the fee, verify who you are, and you are a Steamworks partner.

1. 1Create the account. Sign in with a Steam account at partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect, accept the Steam Distribution Agreement and pay the $100 Steam Direct fee by card or PayPal. One fee per game you release.
2. 2Verify identity, tax and bank. Three short forms. Identity checks can take from minutes to a few days. Until all three are green you can create an app but cannot release it.
3. 3Wait 30 days. Your first game cannot be released earlier than 30 days after the fee is paid. Use that month to build the store page.
4. 4Get the fee back. Once the game reaches $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue, Valve credits the $100 back on your next payout. Demos and playtests attached to a released app are free.

3. Create your app and build the store page

In Steamworks, create a new app with the Steam Direct credit, and the store page editor opens. Valve will not review the page until every required field is filled, so here is the full list.

Graphical assets and their sizes

• Header capsule 920 x 430 px. Search results, wishlists and the top of your store page.
• Small capsule 462 x 174 px. Lists, tag pages, discovery queue rows. Your name must be readable at 231 x 87.
• Main capsule 1232 x 706 px. Front page features and sales. Steam rejects capsules with review quotes, awards or text other than the game name.
• Vertical capsule 748 x 896 px. Sale pages and some front-page layouts.
• Library capsule, header, hero and logo 600 x 900, 920 x 430, 3840 x 1240 and a transparent PNG logo. Shown to people who already own the game, so treat them as part of the product.
• Screenshots At least 5, 1920 x 1080, 16:9, gameplay only: no concept art, awards or marketing copy. At least 4 of them must be suitable for all ages.
• Trailer Up to 1920 x 1080, H.264 + AAC in MP4, 30 or 60 fps, 5,000+ kbps, gameplay in the first 10 seconds, no logo intro. Valve lists a trailer as required for release, and a page without one converts badly anyway.

Text and settings Valve checks

• Short description (under 300 characters, shown in search and on the capsule hover)
• Full description with feature bullets, and the system requirements
• Up to 20 tags. The first ones you set carry the most weight, so put genre and sub-genre first
• Supported languages, interface / audio / subtitles per language
• Content survey (Valve's mature-content questionnaire) and the legal line
• Support contact, release window or date, and the price set for launch

4. Store page review and the Coming Soon period

• Submit for review. Valve checks the page in 2 to 5 business days. Most rejections are about missing screenshots, text on capsules or descriptions that promise features the build does not have.
• Go Coming Soon. Once approved, the page is public with a wishlist button. It has to stay visible for at least two weeks before release. Most successful launches leave it up for months.
• Announce the date late. You can set a release window (a quarter, a month) and switch to an exact date only when the build is ready. Moving a set date twice makes Valve ask questions.

What to do with the months in between is the subject of the Steam launch checklist and the Next Fest guide.

5. Upload your build and pass build review

1. 1Upload with SteamPipe. Steamworks gives you a content builder (steamcmd + a script that describes your depots). The SDK docs walk you through the first upload in about an hour.
2. 2Set the build live on the default branch. Add launch options for each OS, wire achievements and Steam Cloud if you use them, and test with a beta branch and a key from your own account first.
3. 3Submit for build review. Valve installs and launches the game, up to 5 business days. A build that crashes on first start is the usual failure.
4. 4Release. When the page review, the build review, the 30-day wait and the two-week Coming Soon period are all satisfied, the Release button turns on. Releases go live within minutes, usually around 10:00 Pacific.

6. Price, discounts and how Steam pays you

• Set the base price in USD and let Steam suggest regional prices. You can edit them, but the suggestions are what most players in those regions expect.
• A launch discount of 10-20% is normal and shows up in the launch mails Steam sends to everyone who wishlisted. Bigger launch discounts train players to wait.
• Two discount rules bite: no discount within 30 days of a price increase, and no custom discount within 30 days of the previous one. Steam's own seasonal sales are the exception.
• Money arrives monthly, about 30 days after the month ends, once you are above the $100 threshold. Valve handles VAT and sales tax in every region, you get the net.
• The split is 70/30. Valve's share drops to 25% after $10M lifetime revenue and 20% after $50M, which is not a number most of us need to plan around.

Not sure what to charge? Look at the ten closest games in your genre released in the last two years, sort by review count, and price with the ones that did well. The wishlist calculator turns a price and a wishlist count into a first-week estimate.

7. Timeline: from paying the fee to launch day

The fastest honest answer is about six weeks from fee to release. The recommended answer is four to six months, because the Coming Soon page is where wishlists come from, and wishlists decide the launch.

1. Day 0Pay the Steam Direct fee, start identity, tax and bank verification.
2. Week 1-2Create the app, upload capsule art and screenshots, write the page, set tags and the content survey.
3. Week 2-3Store page review (2-5 business days). Fix what Valve flags, resubmit.
4. Week 3+Coming Soon page live. Wishlists start. This is where a real launch spends 3 to 6 months: devlogs, a demo, Steam Next Fest, creators, bundle partners.
5. Launch minus 3 weeksFinal build uploaded, build review (up to 5 business days), release date set to the exact day.
6. Launch minus 1 weekKeys to creators, launch discount configured, press and community posts scheduled.
7. Launch dayRelease around 10:00 Pacific, watch reviews and crash reports, ship the first patch within 48 hours if needed.

8. What it really costs beyond the $100

The fee is the cheapest line on the list. The realistic budget for a page that converts:

• Capsule art: $150-800 from a freelancer who has done Steam capsules before, more from a studio. It is the single best-spent money on the page.
• Trailer: $0 if you cut it yourself from captured footage, $500-3,000 from an editor. Gameplay in the first 5 seconds either way.
• Localization: priced per word; Simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese usually pay for themselves first.
• Marketing: Next Fest is free, a curated creator key mailing in our Dev Hub is $9.99, a bundle partner costs nothing but a conversation.

The full breakdown, with what you can skip, is in How much does it cost to publish a game on Steam.

9. Do you need a publisher?

Honest answer: most small games do not, and the ones that do need one for money or reach, not for the paperwork above.

You might NOT need a Steam publisher if:

• You enjoy marketing and have the time to do it alongside development
• Your page already collects wishlists on its own (a viral clip, a growing community)
• You want to keep 100% of revenue and can fund the launch yourself

You probably NEED a Steam publisher if:

• You would rather build the game than run a launch
• You have no contacts among creators, press or platform holders
• You need money during development or want console ports

10. FAQ

Official references: Steam Direct, Steamworks: Getting started, Store graphical assets. Numbers change; when this page and Steamworks disagree, Steamworks wins.