Steam Release Guide

A practical, community-driven guide to help game developers prepare, publish, and release a game on Steam.

This repository covers the essential steps and best practices for getting a game ready for Steam — from setting up your Steamworks app to preparing your store page, builds, launch, and post-release.

📚 What's inside

• 🏪 Steam Store Page

  • Store description
  • Capsule artwork
  • Screenshots
  • Trailers
  • Tags and categories
  • Localization

• 🛠️ Steamworks Setup

  • App configuration
  • Steamworks features
  • Depots and builds
  • Branches and testing

• 📦 Build & Distribution

  • Preparing your game build
  • Uploading builds
  • Testing on Steam
  • Common issues

• 🚀 Release

  • Coming Soon page
  • Valve review
  • Release checklist
  • Launch day
  • Post-launch tasks

• ✅ Checklists

  • Store page checklist
  • Build checklist
  • Pre-release checklist
  • Launch checklist

🎯 Goal

The goal of this guide is to provide a simple and practical reference for indie developers who want to understand what is required to release a game on Steam without having to dig through hundreds of pages of documentation.

This is not a replacement for the official Steamworks documentation. It is a curated and simplified companion designed to make the process easier to understand and follow.

🗂️ Repository structure

steam-release-guide/
├── README.md
├── getting-started.md
├── steamworks.md
├── store-page/
│   ├── capsule-art.md
│   ├── screenshots.md
│   ├── trailer.md
│   ├── description.md
│   ├── tags.md
│   └── localization.md
├── build/
│   ├── uploading.md
│   ├── depots.md
│   ├── branches.md
│   └── testing.md
├── release/
│   ├── coming-soon.md
│   ├── review.md
│   ├── launch.md
│   └── post-launch.md
└── checklists/
    ├── store-page.md
    ├── build.md
    └── release.md

🔗 Official resources

This guide complements the official Steamworks documentation:

• Steamworks Documentation
• Steam Direct
• Steam Store Presence
• Steamworks SDK

Always refer to the official Steamworks documentation for the latest requirements, policies, and technical information.

🤝 Contributing

Found outdated information, a missing step, or something that could be explained better?

Contributions are welcome!

You can:

• Open an issue
• Submit a pull request
• Suggest improvements or additional topics
• Help keep the checklists up to date

The goal is to make this guide as useful as possible for the game development community.

📄 License

This project is part of the gamedev-kit organization.

See the repository license for usage and contribution terms.