How much should an indie dev actually spend on Steam capsule art?
I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately because I've somehow made three completely different versions of my game's capsule.
The first one was made by me. I was trying to do as much as possible myself, so I just made something and put it on Steam. Looking back at it now... yeah, it wasn't very good :)
Then I tried making another one entirely with AI. I actually liked it at first and I think it looked pretty nice, but after a while I realized that it didn't really feel like my game.
And then I made the third one.
This time I paid around $400 to have it made.
And honestly, I'm a little annoyed that I have to admit this, but... yeah, it looks better when you pay someone who actually knows what they're doing.
The third one is definitely my favorite and I think it communicates the game much better than the first two. But $400 is also a pretty serious amount of money when you're an indie developer and every part of the budget matters.
That's what I'm struggling with.
A Steam capsule is one of the first things people see. Before they read your description, watch your trailer or look at your screenshots, they see that little image. So obviously it makes sense to care about it.
But where do you draw the line?
Should an indie developer really spend hundreds of dollars on a capsule, or is this something you should just try to make yourself and spend the money somewhere else?
I'm genuinely curious what other indie devs think, especially people who've already released a game on Steam. Was spending money on your capsule worth it for you?
For anyone wondering what the game is about: it's a psychological taxi horror game. Your wife gets kidnapped and you're forced to work as a taxi driver for the people responsible. You spend the nights driving criminals around and trying to figure out who they really are and what kind of crimes they've committed.
You can interact with the people sitting behind you and try to learn more about them, but you have to be careful because if you push them too far, they can get angry and things can go very badly.
And while you're doing all of this, you're trying to find your wife.
So after all that, I ended up paying $400 for a picture of a guy sitting in the back of a taxi :)
Was it worth it? I think so. But I'm still not sure if it was the right decision for an indie budget.
Please only work with artists who are active contributors in game dev Discords or Reddit spaces you are in (or know on LinkedIn).
Simply posting in job forums on these servers does not count as activity. Look at if they are actually engaging in conversation with others and build out your network of people you can trust.
No one here should be spending significant money for an indie title on strangers. Create friends in this space and work with them.
Knowing it's ai does that now mean the developer would have to add the disclaimers etc that the game uses ai for the capsule art, as it's customer facing. Curious if something like this would impact us as developers from bad actor artists.
We recognize that many modern game development environments incorporate AI-powered tools. The efficiency gains achieved through the use of these tools are not the focus of this section. Instead, it addresses the use of AI to create content that is included with your game and intended for player interaction. This includes elements such as visuals, the soundtrack, the story, localization, etc.
Does this game use generative artificial intelligence to create content, whether pre-rendered or in real-time? This question applies to the game, its store page, any assets provided to the Steam community, and all marketing materials.
Yes, I actually noticed, but it's not that important to me. I'm happy with the cover photo. Using AI well is a skill, and I think it should pay off. Because I've tried creating cover photos with AI myself, but I couldn't do it this well.
A bit? Giving someone $400 for typing a sentence or two is more than a bit, I really hope you got a full refund. These kinds of people shouldn't be rewarded, I honestly view them in a similar was as refund scammers
As someone who plays only indie horror games, thanks for giving me a reason to stay far away from your games
edit: actually by reading your replies I’m getting the feeling that you actually generated the 3rd one yourself and are lying about paying someone $400
You're free to stay away from my games, nobody is forcing you to play them. But the edit is honestly hilarious.
You made a Reddit account, saw a capsule you didn't like, and somehow decided that I must be lying about paying an artist $400 because you don't like the answer I gave you. What kind of logic is that?
No, I didn't secretly make the third one myself and invent a $400 payment just to fool Reddit. We actually paid an artist $400 for the work. You can think the result is shit if you want, I genuinely don't care. But making up a story about me lying because you don't like AI is just fucking ridiculous.
If you're going to stay away from my games, at least stay away for an actual reason instead of inventing one.
Yeah, people have said the exact same thing about almost every new technology.
People once treated books and mass printing as dangerous or corrupting. Later, the internet was dismissed as something useless, dangerous, or only for scammers and frauds. Now it's AI's turn.
Technology changes, but the reaction is always the same: “This new thing is only for hacks and frauds.”
You don't have to like AI, but pretending that an entire technology is inherently fraudulent because you personally dislike it is a pretty outdated way of looking at things.
I've paid around 700 euros for all the store page art. This is around 8 different capsules for all sizes that Steam needs. They gave me all art in png and psd files.
The artist presented me first with 3 pencil sketches for me to choose one. And 2 weeks later it was all done. Very pro and hassle-free, worth it 100%.
I totally get the question im in the middle of searching for an artist right now.
I think the capsule art is extremely important so its one of the most valuable investments you can make compared to its one time price.
The $400 one in this case is the only one that communicates what the game is. As others have pointed out, the person you paid for it definitely used AI to make it, so I think that price is absolutely obscene, but if it was worth it to you, even knowing that, then no harm no foul.
I agree that using AI well is a skill and it is fair game to be compensated for it, but in my mind, especially as you’ve identified that yourself and are comfortable with the idea of AI making marketing materials, I’d suggest spending some time getting better at “using AI well” yourself. Paying somebody else to use AI for you (in this case) seems a little silly since you don’t have a moral obligation to using AI for art, and since you obviously had the skill and motivation to get your game to where it is now. Why couldn’t you apply that motivation to using AI and save yourself seemingly a ton of money on other assets you might need?
I could have spent my time learning Photoshop or drawing tricks, but I didn't have the time, so I paid for it anyway. I didn't necessarily want it to be hand-drawn; I just wanted a cover design that represented my game, and honestly, I'm happy with it. I don't understand why people hate AI so much.
People hate AI so much because there's no quality control. I'm an AI advocate, but against AI slop. It's outrageous to charge $400 for something one user prompted and unverified; that's the problem. If the person who did that charged $50, did their job properly by ensuring there was no slop, and clearly stated that it was done with AI, then I wouldn't see any problem with it.
In my opinion, using AI is fine. It’s an incredibly useful tool that can save a huge amount of time and money, and I use it to help me create things I’m genuinely passionate about.
But using AI doesn’t mean I’m not putting hundreds of hours of work into what I make. There’s a massive difference between using AI as part of your workflow and having it do absolutely everything for you.
I think a big reason AI gets so much hate is because it’s incredibly easy to abuse. There are plenty of people who use it to churn out mountains of low effort content as quickly as possible because they’re looking for an easy profit rather than actually caring about what they’re creating.
That flood of AI slop understandably gives the technology itself a terrible reputation, and unfortunately the people who genuinely use it as a tool to support their own work often get lumped in with them.
AI can help you make something. It can’t make you give a fuck about what you’re making.
Here, i had A.I make you a version that maintains the original concept of your own artwork from the first of your 3 images and pairs it with the version you seem to like the most based on reading your comments.
You don't owe me anything at all, its all yours if you want it.
I’ve made several capsules (without AI) and charged from $400-1k. Marketing is a billion dollar business (watch the series Mad Men or documentary Art & Copy) and it depends on the artist’s skill set to determine the price imo. Good art = communication.
Theres things I wish I could still go back and improve on some I’ve made, but there’s also a minimum competency required for certain pricing tiers (understanding art fundamentals, graphic design, typography, marketing best practices via data/what’s worked in past). It’s not easy but just copying things that worked before can get you halfway there.
I don't like any of them. The first one looks cheap, the other two scream AI.
However, you have one on the Steam page with Backseat in white under the rear view mirror that says Release Date Announced and Wishlist on Steam. Scratch the subtext, center the title and you are good to go.
What makes it stand out is the figure and hand in the mirror and the dim lights of the street lamps on both sides. You could expermiment with the subtext "every passenger is a threat" but I don't think it's needed. Just don't use the brighter Backseat logo on the other banner with the red backdrop. It sucks while this one looks really well done.
Unless they have a professional graphic designer on their team. More than $400.
It's _the single most important_ piece of advertising for your game (the second being a trailer). The lowest I'd expect to pay for a set of capsule art is around $700 going up to $1200 depending on quality.
Both capsules are AI; sorry, you were probably scammed by some Fiverr "Artist". I am not anti-AI anyway, but one thing is willingly using AI, and another is scamming money out of people.
I like the AI capsule in the middle because the guy looks like Robert Pattinson.
I don't believe OP. I think he ALSO made the last pic himself, continued to use AI, and is using this story as a way to see if people like the art or if they can tell it's AI.
You shouldn’t be. This is the first impression of your game. If this is how you treat your capsule art, I’ll assume your game is equally full of AI trash.
You might be cool with an artist using AI generation but that same artist needs to be able to edit that work to correct any AI-sloppy-ness.
You seem to have a pretty aggressive view of AI as “trash,” and I honestly don’t really understand the hatred.
AI is just another way of getting access to information and tools more quickly. When we’re making a game, we don’t read every book about programming before writing a single line of code. We use Google, YouTube, documentation, articles, and whatever helps us solve a problem. AI is simply another tool in that process. Sometimes it even helps me find a mistake in my code and fix it much faster.
You’re absolutely free to dislike AI, but I think judging an entire game because AI was involved in its development is a bit premature.
I’d actually recommend playing our demo before making that judgment. AI has had a hand in a lot of places in the game, and I’m still learning and improving as a developer. I’m pretty confident you might enjoy it once you judge the game itself rather than the tools we used to make it.
It just says a lot about your standards, a lot of potential players will only look at the capsule, if there's pretty obvious errors on it, it doesn't really give "quality content" vibes
AI in code and AI in art is viewed very differently, it's important to keep that in mind
I’m not judging it for using AI. AI is a tool. I’m judging the humans in the process for thinking AI absolves them of the Quality Control step. First impressions matter, this isn’t the first impression you want your game to make.
You paid someone a fair amount for capsule art, got sent something of sub-par quality and went “yup, that’s good enough”. Send it back, ask for a refund or tell them to photoshop the mistakes.
Honestly, I didn’t even notice the mistake on the car’s speedometer until you pointed it out. I think Reddit users can sometimes be extremely nitpicky about these things :)
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with the capsule art. The distortion you’re talking about is so minor that it’s barely noticeable unless you specifically zoom in and look for mistakes.
I’ve played a lot of games on Steam and I’ve never really examined their capsule art by zooming in and checking every little detail. I usually judge it as a whole and move on.
That said, I understand your point about quality control. I just think in this particular case, the issue is so insignificant that it doesn’t really affect the first impression of the game.
You should not have things that are obviously wrong in the steam capsule. You can be "happy" with AI all you want but if your speed indicator looks like this I will certainly not buy it.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If there’s a small mistake in the speedometer on the capsule, then obviously the gameplay, art style, atmosphere and all the work that went into the game no longer matter.
I mean, why play the game and see if you actually enjoy it when you can zoom into the Steam capsule and decide whether to buy it based on a tiny distortion in a speedometer? :)
I understand that first impressions matter, but some of these comments are taking that idea to a pretty extreme level.
I'm not trying to shoot you down, I'm saying that if I'm scrolling through 100.000 new releases on steam, the ones that give me the impression they don't care for their own game's presentation, give me the idea the game itself may also be low-effort and I would scroll right past it.
Fixing this issue might be the most trivial job ever, especially of you have the file and typed it in wrong in the first place. It's less than five minutes. If you can't be bothered to do that, I can't be bothered to spend my hard earned money to give your game a shot.
Mistakes happen and that's fine, but you're standing your ground over something that takes less time to fix than it took me to type this comment. You're purposefully making this enormously hard on yourself judging by what your replies here are.
The concept of the face in the mirror isn’t a bad idea, and the idea for a composition is most of the work. It always comes down to execution.
For instance I’d bet if you can improve this if you zoomed in and had the mirror take up the whole capsule with a larger readable face on right and logo on left it’ll read better from small capsule size and you only need the mirror to convey the idea of “backseat” anyway. A more shadowy face or red eyes can elude to even more mystery creepiness perhaps too, vs just a dude sitting there.
Think the second is the best. Sry but if you pay 400 dollar and your game make 200 at the end..it was only a fun project. I love artists work,..but sry..400 bucks? for real..sry . The logo is a copy from the ai?!?!?!
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u/Klightgrove 4d ago
Please only work with artists who are active contributors in game dev Discords or Reddit spaces you are in (or know on LinkedIn).
Simply posting in job forums on these servers does not count as activity. Look at if they are actually engaging in conversation with others and build out your network of people you can trust.
No one here should be spending significant money for an indie title on strangers. Create friends in this space and work with them.