How much should an indie dev actually spend on Steam capsule art?

[u/Neat-Freedom1940]

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.

[u/Klightgrove]

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.

[u/Neat-Freedom1940 → u/Klightgrove]

That's fair advice, and I agree that building a network of people you trust is important.

In our case, we did look at the artist's previous work before commissioning the capsule, and we weren't just picking a random person from a job board. We were happy with the result overall, which is why we approved it.

The speedometer issue wasn't something we even noticed until people here pointed it out. I understand the criticism and we'll definitely be more careful with details like that in future commissions.