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Game Trailers and Screenshots Guide

A practical, opinionated guide to creating trailers and screenshots that actually convert viewers into wishlists.

· 28 min read· Updated
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The Complete Guide to Game Trailers and Screenshots That Sell

Your trailer is probably too long, too slow, and starts with a logo nobody cares about.

TL;DR: Your trailer has 5 seconds to hook before viewers scroll away. Start with your most compelling gameplay (no logos), keep it under 90 seconds, sync cuts to music beats, and end with a clear call to action. Screenshots should show core gameplay first and include 6-8 varied images that answer "what is this game?"

Key Takeaways

  • The first 5 seconds determine everything: Steam autoplays your trailer and you have moments before viewers scroll past
  • Structure: Hook (0-5s), Core Loop (5-25s), Escalation (25-45s), Title/Release Info (final 5-10s)
  • Target 60-90 seconds for gameplay trailers and 30-45 seconds for teasers since anything over 2 minutes loses most viewers
  • Screenshot ordering matters: first screenshot should show core gameplay, then different environments, unique mechanics, dramatic moments, and UI/systems
  • Your press kit needs downloadable MP4 trailers, b-roll footage, and both UI-on and UI-off screenshots It's the unskippable cutscene of your marketing campaign. Your screenshots probably look like random frame grabs from a dev build. Both of these things are fixable, and fixing them will do more for your wishlist numbers than any tweet thread or Discord growth hack.

Trailers and screenshots are the most important marketing assets you'll create for your game. Full stop. Steam autoplays your first trailer the moment someone lands on your store page. Your first screenshot appears in search results, the Discovery Queue, and recommendation carousels. These visual assets do the selling while you sleep, while you're heads-down fixing bugs, while you're arguing on Reddit about whether your genre tag is right.

Martin Robinson, former Eurogamer editor-in-chief, described the ideal press kit as "a folder of nine to 12 screenshots, a trailer, a small amount of b-roll, and some good high-quality artwork." That's it. Those assets end up everywhere: your Steam page, your press kit, every social post, every showcase submission. Get them right once, and they work for you across every channel.

This guide covers how to make trailers that hook in five seconds, screenshots that sell your game without a single word, and press kit assets that journalists actually want to use.

Table of Contents

The 5-Second Rule: Why Your Opening Kills Your Trailer {#the-5-second-rule}

Steam autoplays your first trailer on your store page. No click required. The video starts rolling the second someone sees your page. You have maybe five seconds before they scroll down, click away, or go back to browsing.

Countdown timer with fading viewer attention

Valve's own Steamworks documentation puts it bluntly: "You may have less than 10 seconds to make an impression." That's Valve being generous. In reality, it's closer to five.

Watch the Balatro trailer. It opens with a hand of poker hitting the table and cards erupting into a cascade of multipliers and visual chaos. Three seconds in, you already know this is a card game that does something weird with poker. You're curious. You keep watching.

Now think about the last ten indie game trailers you saw. How many started with a developer logo fading in from black? A publisher logo after that? Maybe a slow camera pan across a generic environment? By the time actual gameplay appeared, you were already gone.

Derek Lieu, a professional game trailer editor who's worked on titles like Outer Wilds and Sable, calls this the single most common indie game trailer mistake: burying your hook. His advice is simple. Start with the most exciting, surprising, or visually distinct moment from your game. The logo can come later.

The Hollow Knight: Silksong reveal trailer opens with Hornet slicing through enemies in a gorgeous new environment. No title card. No "from Team Cherry." Just movement, combat, and a silk thread stretching across the screen. By the time the title hits, the audience is already screaming.

That's the standard. Not the exception.

What a Good First Five Seconds Looks Like

Your opening should answer one question: "What is this, and why should I care?"

For action games, that means your most fluid, visually striking combat sequence. For puzzle games, show a mind-bending solution that makes viewers think "wait, how?" For atmospheric games, put your most arresting environment front and center with movement that draws the eye.

What it should never be:

  • A studio logo
  • A publisher logo
  • A black screen with white text
  • A slow fade from black
  • Narration explaining the lore
  • An establishing shot that takes eight seconds to arrive anywhere

Cut those. All of them. Move your logo to the end card or skip it entirely in the trailer.

Trailer Structure That Actually Works

Derek Lieu outlines a template he calls "Tell, Show, Repeat." You present a concept with a title card, then immediately show gameplay that demonstrates it. Then you move to the next concept. It's dead simple and works for almost any genre.

Film editing timeline with color-coded clips

But the broader structure that most successful indie trailers follow is this:

Hook (0-5 seconds). Your most visually compelling gameplay moment. Something that makes a scrolling viewer stop and actually watch. No text, no logo, no setup.

Core Loop (5-25 seconds). Show what the player actually does. This is where Valve's recommendation kicks in hardest. Steamworks docs explicitly say: "We highly recommend that the first trailer you list on your store page is primarily gameplay, showing the player what they will be doing in the game." Show the core mechanic. Show it clearly. Show it from the perspective the player will actually see.

Escalation (25-45 seconds). Build from the core loop into variety. Different environments. New mechanics. Bigger enemies. Harder puzzles. This section answers "OK, I get what it is, but does it stay interesting?" Dead Cells does this brilliantly, starting with basic combat and platforming, then rapidly escalating through biomes, boss fights, and weapon variety. The pacing tightens. Cuts get faster.

Title and Release Info (final 5-10 seconds). Your game's logo, release date or release window, platform icons, and a wishlist call to action. Lee Guille, PR director at Rockfish Games, emphasizes that "the final image should easily communicate information such as the release date, platforms, where to wishlist, and logos." This is the only place where text-heavy content belongs.

That's it. Hook, core, escalation, close. The Hades trailer follows this structure almost beat for beat. So does Celeste's. So does every trailer Derek Lieu breaks down on his YouTube channel.

The "Show the Dream, Not the Job" Principle

Derek Lieu has a phrase that should be taped above every trailer editor's monitor: "Show the dream, not the job."

Your trailer shouldn't show every system, every menu, every crafting screen. It should show the version of your game that lives in a player's imagination after they've been told the concept. The fantasy. The moments they'll remember. Nobody's fantasy involves reading a skill tree.

Stardew Valley's trailer doesn't show the inventory management. It shows the farm coming alive, seasons changing, and relationships growing. The job of playing Stardew involves a lot of menu interaction. The dream is a cozy life on a farm. The trailer sells the dream.

How Long Should Your Trailer Be?

Short. Shorter than you think.

The ideal length for a Steam store page trailer is 60 to 90 seconds. That's the window where you can show enough to communicate your game without losing viewers. Go shorter if your game's hook is immediately obvious. A 30-second trailer for a game with a crystal-clear concept is better than a 2-minute trailer that meanders.

Go over 90 seconds and you start bleeding viewers. Go over two minutes and you're making a video essay, not a trailer. Nobody finishes a three-minute indie game trailer. Nobody.

Valve's Steamworks documentation notes that Steam generates "microtrailers," which are six-second looping clips automatically created from your first trailer. These appear in category hubs, sale pages, and the Steam homepage during seasonal events. If your trailer is three minutes long, those auto-generated six seconds might capture a studio logo and a fade-in. That's a wasted opportunity.

Balatro's announcement trailer is 52 seconds. Celeste's launch trailer is 68 seconds. The Hollow Knight: Silksong reveal is 2 minutes and 38 seconds, but that's Team Cherry revealing one of the most anticipated games in indie history to a live audience at E3. You're not Team Cherry. Keep it under 90.

Length by Trailer Type

Different trailers serve different purposes and can justify different lengths:

Teaser trailer (15-30 seconds). Just enough to establish mood, genre, and your game's visual identity. You're announcing that this thing exists.

Gameplay trailer (45-90 seconds). The workhorse. This goes on your Steam page. This is what Valve recommends as your first listed trailer.

Launch trailer (60-90 seconds). Similar to the gameplay trailer but with more polish, final assets, and a concrete release date.

Accolades trailer (30-45 seconds). Post-launch. Show press quotes, review scores, and award nominations over your best gameplay footage. Lee Guille notes that "adding post-release assets such as an accolades trailer is easy to miss" but it's a simple way to refresh your store page after launch.

Music and Audio Do Half the Work

Mute your trailer. Watch it silent. If it's boring, your visuals need work. Now watch it again with audio. If it doesn't feel 50% more exciting, your music choice needs work.

Music sets pacing. It tells the viewer when to feel tension, when to feel excitement, when to lean in. A perfectly cut trailer with flat, generic background music will feel amateurish. A decently cut trailer with a perfectly synced soundtrack will feel professional.

Here's what matters:

Sync your cuts to the beat. Every major cut should land on a musical beat. Not approximately. Precisely. This is the single easiest way to make a trailer feel polished. Developers who hire professional editors consistently point to beat-synced editing as the primary thing that made their trailer feel "professional" versus "DIY." Watch the Dead Cells trailer. Every biome transition, every weapon switch, every boss reveal lands on a drum hit or bass drop. That's not accidental.

Choose music that matches your game's tone. This sounds obvious, but the number of cozy farming games with epic orchestral trailer music is staggering. If your game is contemplative, your music should be contemplative. If your game is frantic, your music should be frantic. Celeste's trailer uses the actual game soundtrack, and it's perfect because the music was already designed to match the pacing of the gameplay.

Don't use copyrighted music. This will get your trailer muted or pulled on YouTube. Use royalty-free music from services like Epidemic Sound, Artlist, or Musicbed. Or commission a track. If your game already has an original soundtrack, use that. It's the most authentic option and doubles as a preview of the audio experience.

Consider that many viewers watch without sound. Valve's own documentation says: "The customer may be watching your trailer without any audio. You will want to think about how long it takes for the customer to learn about your product, and if they can learn about it without audio." Your trailer needs to work silently. Text overlays and strong visual storytelling ensure it does.

Text Overlays vs. Pure Gameplay

Two schools of thought. Both can work. The wrong choice for your game will hurt you.

Pure gameplay works when your game is visually self-explanatory. If someone can look at five seconds of footage and immediately understand the genre, the mechanic, and the appeal, you don't need text. Hollow Knight doesn't need a title card saying "Explore a vast underground kingdom." The footage says it.

Text overlays work when your game's hook isn't immediately visible. Strategy games, management sims, RPGs with deep systems, anything where the "why this is interesting" lives beneath the surface. Text bridges the gap. Derek Lieu calls this the "Tell, Show, Repeat" approach: a title card states a concept ("Build your colony"), then gameplay demonstrates it, then the next title card introduces the next concept ("Survive the winter").

Rules for text overlays:

  • Keep them short. Five words max per card. "100+ weapons" beats "Discover an arsenal of over one hundred unique weapons with special abilities."
  • Use them to add context the footage can't show. "Coming 2026" is useful. "A harrowing tale of loss and redemption" is marketing copy that belongs on your Steam description, not your trailer.
  • Match the font and style to your game's visual identity. Comic Sans over a horror game is, admittedly, a choice.
  • Never let text stay on screen for more than 3 seconds. If someone has to pause to read your trailer, you've failed.

The Slay the Spire trailer uses text overlays sparingly and effectively, naming each character class while showing their unique gameplay. It gives structure to what would otherwise be a confusing montage of different card mechanics.

Announce Trailer vs. Launch Trailer

These serve completely different purposes. Treating them as the same trailer is a common and costly mistake.

The Announce Trailer

Goal: make people aware your game exists and get them to wishlist.

You're selling the concept, the vibe, the fantasy. You probably don't have final assets yet. That's fine. Show enough to communicate what the game is and why it's different. Tease. Leave questions unanswered. Make people want to follow your development.

The announce trailer can be shorter (30-60 seconds), more cinematic, and less focused on showing every system. It's a first impression, not an exhaustive feature tour.

What it must include: enough actual gameplay to signal that this is a real game in active development, your game's title, and a "Wishlist Now on Steam" end card.

What it should skip: release dates you're not sure about, feature lists that might change, and any footage from systems that aren't close to final.

The Launch Trailer

Goal: convert existing wishlisters and new visitors into purchases.

This is all business. Show the game as it actually plays. Show variety. Show polish. Show the final product. People who see your launch trailer are making a buying decision right now. Give them the information they need.

The launch trailer should be your best 60-90 seconds of gameplay, cut with precision, ending with a clear release date (or "Available Now"), platform icons, and a price if appropriate.

Replace your announce trailer with the launch trailer as the first video on your Steam page when you ship. Or keep both and reorder them, putting the launch trailer first. Valve lets you drag and drop trailer order in the Steamworks backend, and the first two valid trailers display before any screenshots.

Tools for Making Trailers on a Budget

You don't need a $2,000 video editing setup. Here's what actually works for solo devs and small teams:

Capture: OBS Studio (free). Set it to record at 1080p, 60fps, with a high bitrate. Steam accepts up to 1920x1080 at 30 or 60fps. Use H.264 encoding with AAC audio. Capture clean gameplay with the debug UI hidden, placeholder art swapped out, and your game running smoothly. Record more footage than you think you need. Three to five times more.

Editing: DaVinci Resolve (free version). It's a professional-grade video editor that costs nothing. The free tier handles everything you need: cutting, transitions, text overlays, color grading, and audio mixing. The learning curve is real, but there are hundreds of YouTube tutorials specifically for game trailer editing in Resolve.

Alternatives include Kdenlive (free, open source, Linux-friendly), Shotcut (free), or if you already own it, Adobe Premiere Pro. Don't buy Premiere just for trailers.

Audio: For royalty-free music, Epidemic Sound and Artlist run around $10-15/month. That's cheap insurance against a copyright strike. Free options include Incompetech (Kevin MacLeod's library, used in approximately 40% of all YouTube videos at this point) and Freesound.org for sound effects.

Export settings for Steam: H.264 video, AAC stereo audio, 1920x1080 resolution, 30 or 60fps, and a bitrate of at least 5,000 Kbps (higher is better). Export as .mp4. Valve transcodes everything, but cleaner source files produce better results. Audio should be 44KHz or 48KHz sample rate. Avoid surround sound since Steam filters everything down to stereo.

When to Hire a Trailer Editor

The honest assessment: if your trailer isn't getting the reaction you want, hiring a professional is probably the highest-ROI marketing spend available to you.

DIY desk vs professional editing suite

A good trailer editor costs $1,000-5,000 depending on the length, complexity, and the editor's experience. That sounds like a lot until you consider that your trailer will be seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people on your Steam page. If a professional trailer converts even 1% better than your DIY version, it pays for itself many times over.

Hire a professional when:

  • Your game looks good but your trailer doesn't capture that. This is the most common case. The game is polished, the art is strong, but the trailer feels flat because the editing, pacing, or music selection isn't right.
  • You've never edited video before. Learning DaVinci Resolve while also trying to ship a game is a lot. Time has value.
  • You're approaching a major visibility moment: Steam Next Fest, a showcase submission, a publisher pitch. First impressions are irreversible. A weak trailer at a showcase gets one chance and then it's gone.
  • You've been staring at your own game for two years and can't tell what's interesting about it anymore. Fresh eyes see what you can't.

DIY when:

  • Your budget is genuinely zero.
  • You enjoy video editing and are willing to invest serious time learning it.
  • Your game is early enough that you'll need to remake the trailer multiple times anyway.
  • You're making a simple teaser (under 30 seconds) and your game's visuals do most of the work.

Derek Lieu offers consultations where he reviews your trailer and gives specific feedback. That's a middle ground between fully DIY and hiring an editor: you do the work, but a professional tells you what to fix.

Screenshots: Your Silent Sales Team {#screenshots-your-silent-sales-team}

If trailers are your 60-second elevator pitch, screenshots are the brochure someone flips through while waiting. They work in silence. No audio, no motion, no pacing tricks. Just a single frame that has to tell a complete story about your game.

Game screenshots displayed as gallery artwork

Your first screenshot might be the most important static marketing asset you have. It appears in Steam search results, the Discovery Queue, recommendation widgets, and anywhere your game gets surfaced algorithmically. Many players see this screenshot before they ever see your trailer.

Valve's Steamworks rules are explicit: "Screenshots should exclusively show the gameplay of your game. This means avoiding using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images showing awards, marketing copy, written descriptions." No cheating with pretty concept art. Show the real thing.

Screenshot Composition and Ordering

Screenshot ordering on your Steam page is not random. You control it, and you should be deliberate about it.

Your first screenshot should show your core gameplay loop. Not a title screen. Not a menu. Not a zoomed-out overview where you can't tell what's happening. Show a player actually doing the thing that makes your game your game. For Hades, that's Zagreus mid-combat in a gorgeous room, abilities flying. For Stardew Valley, that's the farm with crops growing and the player tending them.

Every screenshot after that should answer a new question about your game. Lee Guille at Rockfish Games puts it well: "a curated set of images will go farther than a shotgun blast." Don't show eight screenshots of the same dungeon with slightly different enemies. Show range.

Here's a screenshot sequence that works for most games:

  1. Core gameplay at its most visually appealing
  2. A different environment or biome (proves variety exists)
  3. A unique mechanic or system (the thing that makes your game different)
  4. A dramatic moment (boss fight, story beat, impressive set piece)
  5. UI/inventory/skill tree (shows depth for genre fans)
  6. Another environment (reinforces variety)
  7. Optional: multiplayer, co-op, or social features if applicable
  8. Optional: a wide shot that shows the game's scale or art direction

Six to eight screenshots is the sweet spot. Valve requires a minimum of five. Going above ten adds diminishing returns. Going below six feels sparse. What tends to happen in practice is that developers obsess over having "perfect" screenshots when "good variety" matters more—showing different environments and mechanics converts better than polishing five shots of the same area.

Composition Basics

You don't need a photography degree. You need three rules:

Fill the frame. Your screenshot should be dense with interesting visual information. An empty field with a tiny character in the corner tells nobody anything. Get close to the action.

Show action, not stillness. A character mid-swing, a spell mid-cast, particles flying, enemies reacting. Screenshots with movement feel alive even though they're static. A screenshot of a character standing idle in an empty room feels like a test build.

Each screenshot should provoke a question. "How do I get that weapon?" "What's in that building?" "How do I solve that puzzle?" Curiosity drives wishlists. If a screenshot fully explains itself at a glance with nothing left to wonder about, it's doing half its job.

UI On vs. UI Off {#ui-on-vs-ui-off}

This debate comes up in every r/gamedev screenshot thread. The answer isn't either/or. It's both, deployed strategically.

Valve's Steamworks documentation sides with UI: "It is also often beneficial to have the in-game HUD elements visible during gameplay videos" and the same applies to screenshots. "Showing the in-game UI can be helpful for players to understand how they will be interacting with your game."

Lee Guille agrees: "It's important to show UI, inventory systems, and other meat and potatoes aspects of your game that a player will encounter. These kinds of images explain systems players will spend a bunch of time in and sometimes onboard genre fans better than a flashy boss battle."

But Katharine Castle, editor-in-chief at Rock Paper Shotgun, wants clean images for press coverage. Watermarks are unusable. Cluttered UI can make screenshots harder to feature in an article layout.

The solution: include both in your press kit. Your Steam page should lean toward UI-on, because players browsing your store page want to understand the game. Your press kit should include a set of UI-free screenshots alongside the UI versions, giving journalists options.

For your Steam page specifically, mix it up. Start with a UI-on screenshot that shows your game in its natural played state. Include one or two UI-free screenshots that showcase the art direction and environments. This gives browsers the best of both worlds.

GIF Screenshots: When They Help, When They Hurt {#gif-screenshots}

Steam doesn't support animated GIFs as screenshots in the screenshot carousel. But GIFs work brilliantly in your Steam store description, the long text section below the fold.

GIFs in your description show your game in motion without requiring someone to watch the trailer. They break up text walls and demonstrate mechanics that are hard to convey in a still image. Guille notes that GIFs in press kits "can help make a game memorable." That goes double for your store page description.

Rules for Steam description GIFs:

  • Keep them short. Two to four seconds of a looping mechanic. Not a 30-second gameplay clip compressed into a 50MB file.
  • Optimize file size aggressively. Large GIFs slow down page loads and Steam may not display them reliably.
  • Match the GIF to the text near it. If you're describing your combat system, the GIF should show combat.
  • Use them to highlight what's unique. Generic running-through-a-field footage doesn't need a GIF. A unique grappling hook mechanic does.

For social media and press kits, GIFs and short video clips are gold. A two-second clip of a satisfying mechanic on Twitter/X can outperform any static image. Record these intentionally during development, not as afterthoughts.

The Screenshot Test {#the-screenshot-test}

Here's an exercise that will tell you if your screenshots are working.

Show your screenshots to someone who's never seen your game. Don't tell them anything about it. Then ask them three questions:

  1. What genre is this game?
  2. What do you do in it?
  3. Does it look interesting?

If they can't answer the first two questions correctly from screenshots alone, your images aren't communicating. If they can answer but say no to the third, your composition or visual quality needs work.

This test catches a problem that's invisible when you're close to your own project. You know your game is a roguelike deckbuilder with fishing mechanics. But if your screenshots show dark caves, generic combat, and no cards, a browser would guess "action platformer" and move on.

Every screenshot should reinforce what your game is. Genre, mechanics, visual identity. If someone sees only your screenshots and can't place your game in the right category, you're losing wishlisters to simple confusion.

Free Tool: Steam Image Resizer — Resize your capsule art to all required Steam sizes instantly. Runs in your browser, no signup required.

Screenshot Specs for Steam {#screenshot-specs-for-steam}

The technical requirements (from Steamworks documentation, current as of 2026):

  • Minimum resolution: 1920x1080 pixels
  • Aspect ratio: 16:9 required
  • Format: JPG or PNG accepted
  • Minimum count: 5 screenshots required
  • Age suitability: At least 4 screenshots should be marked "suitable for all ages" (no gore, violence, or suggestive themes). If you don't flag enough screenshots as suitable, your game may not appear on the front page or in hover previews.
  • Localization: You can upload localized versions of screenshots by dragging alternate versions onto existing thumbnails. Language suffixes in filenames (like screenshot_japanese.jpg) help Steam's system identify them.

For your press kit, go higher resolution. 3840x2160 (4K) gives journalists and content creators the flexibility they need for thumbnails, article headers, and video overlays. Rockfish Games' Michael Schade recommends providing "layered PSD files that outlets can use with different compositions." That's going above and beyond, but it's the kind of thing that makes journalists remember you.

Katharine Castle confirms that JPEG is the preferred format for press. And an absolute rule: no watermarks. Screenshots with watermarks are "typically unusable" for press coverage.

Screenshot Captions

Steam lets you add captions to each screenshot. Most developers skip this. Don't.

Captions appear when players click into the full-size screenshot view. They're a free opportunity to add context. "The Crimson Citadel, the game's largest dungeon" tells a viewer more than the image alone. "Mix and match 200+ skills from 8 character classes" turns a screenshot of a skill tree into a selling point.

Keep captions to one sentence. Use them to highlight features, name locations, or add light context that makes the image more interesting.

Press Kit Assets: What Journalists Actually Need {#press-kit-assets}

Your trailer and screenshots don't just live on Steam. They're the core of your press kit, and journalists have specific needs that differ from what Steam requires.

Organized asset folders being unpacked

Trailers for Press

Provide downloadable MP4 files of your trailers. Not just YouTube links. Rockfish Games provides "high-quality MP4 of all our trailers for media and content creators." YouTubers need to embed footage in their own videos. Journalists need to pull clips for articles and social posts. A YouTube link means they have to download from YouTube (lossy), screen-record (worse), or skip your trailer entirely (most likely).

Host your trailer files somewhere reliable. A Google Drive folder works. A direct download link from your website works. Whatever you use, make sure the link doesn't expire and the files don't require requesting access.

B-Roll Footage

B-roll is clean gameplay footage without commentary, HUD overlays, or debug information. It's what YouTubers and journalists use when they're talking about your game and need footage rolling underneath their narration.

Most developers don't provide b-roll. The ones who do stand out immediately. Record 2-5 minutes of clean, high-quality gameplay from different parts of your game. Export it at the same specs as your trailer (1080p, 60fps, H.264). Include it in your press kit.

This one asset removes the biggest friction point for content creators covering your game. Without b-roll, they have to capture footage themselves, which means downloading your game, setting up capture, playing until they find interesting moments, and then editing. With b-roll, they can start producing coverage immediately.

Screenshots for Press

Your press kit screenshots should be a superset of your Steam screenshots. Include everything on your store page, plus:

  • UI-free versions of your best shots
  • Higher resolution versions (4K when possible)
  • Different aspect ratios if you have them (vertical crops for social media)
  • Screenshots that show features or areas not on your Steam page (gives press something exclusive to show)

Organize them clearly. Lee Guille recommends a folder structure:

/presskit/images/screenshots/
/presskit/images/key-art/
/presskit/video/trailers/
/presskit/video/b-roll/
/presskit/video/gifs/
/presskit/branding/logos/

Key Art and Logos

Your key art is the illustration that represents your game across all platforms. It should work in multiple crop ratios because it'll appear as Steam capsule art, social media banners, press article headers, and physical booth banners if you show at events.

For logos, include:

  • Full color on transparent background (PNG)
  • Monochrome/white version on transparent background (PNG)
  • SVG if available (scales infinitely, useful for print)

Michael Schade emphasizes that "all screenshots and concept art should be published in high quality without a logo." Logos go in the branding folder, separately. Let journalists and creators use them where they choose, not baked into every image.

A tool like presskit.gg organizes all of this automatically: screenshots, trailers, logos, and descriptions in a single professional page that journalists can browse and download from. If building and maintaining a press kit folder structure sounds tedious, that's because it is. Press kit tools exist to solve exactly this problem.

The Trailer and Screenshot Checklist {#the-checklist}

Trailer Checklist

  • First 5 seconds show compelling gameplay (no logos, no fades)
  • Total length is under 90 seconds (under 60 is even better)
  • Primarily shows actual gameplay from the player's perspective
  • Music is synced to cuts and matches the game's tone
  • Works when watched on mute (text or strong visuals carry the message)
  • End card has: game title, release date/window, platform icons, wishlist URL
  • Exported at 1920x1080, 30 or 60fps, H.264 with AAC audio
  • Bitrate is 5,000+ Kbps
  • Audio sample rate is 44KHz or 48KHz
  • Categorized correctly in Steamworks (Gameplay, Cinematic, Teaser, etc.)
  • Gameplay trailer is listed first on your store page
  • Downloadable MP4 version in your press kit

Screenshot Checklist

  • Minimum 5 screenshots, ideally 6-8
  • All are 1920x1080 or higher, 16:9 aspect ratio
  • First screenshot shows core gameplay clearly
  • Mix of environments, mechanics, and moments (no duplicates)
  • At least 4 marked "suitable for all ages" in Steamworks
  • Captions added to each screenshot
  • UI-free versions included in press kit
  • High-res (4K) versions included in press kit
  • No watermarks on any version
  • JPEG format for press distribution

Press Kit Asset Checklist

  • All Steam trailers as downloadable MP4 files
  • 2-5 minutes of clean b-roll footage
  • 9-12 press-quality screenshots (mix of UI-on and UI-off)
  • Key art in multiple crops/sizes
  • Logo files (color, monochrome, transparent PNG, SVG)
  • GIFs of standout mechanics (2-4 seconds each)
  • Everything organized in clearly labeled folders
  • All hosted on a reliable, non-expiring link

Common Trailer Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Every one of these is something I've seen in real trailers. Multiple times. This week.

Starting with logos. Already covered, but it's worth repeating because it's that common. Your trailer isn't a Marvel movie. Nobody in your target audience is watching specifically because your studio made it. Move the logo to the end. Or cut it.

Showing the game at its worst. You spent 18 months building your game and the trailer shows the tutorial area. The gray cave. The starter weapon. The empty town. Show the coolest stuff first. Save the starting area for people who actually buy the game.

Matched audio/visual quality. Gorgeous pixel art with a MIDI keyboard soundtrack. Beautiful 3D environments with tinny, compressed sound effects. Audio quality has to match visual quality. If your game sounds like it was recorded through a phone, fix that before you trailer it.

Too many title cards. Text overlay is a tool, not a crutch. If your trailer is 60 seconds and 30 of those seconds are black screens with white text, you don't have a trailer. You have a PowerPoint presentation.

The feature dump. "Over 100 weapons! 50 enemy types! Procedurally generated levels! Crafting! Base building! Co-op! PvP!" Nobody processes a feature list in a trailer. Show one or two standout features through gameplay. The rest go on your Steam description.

No call to action. Your trailer ends. Now what? If the viewer doesn't see "Wishlist Now on Steam" or "Available Now" with a release date, they'll nod approvingly and never think about your game again. Always end with a clear next step.

Wrong aspect ratio or resolution. Steam is optimized for 16:9 widescreen. Upload a 4:3 trailer and you get ugly black bars on the sides. Upload a vertical video and you've told every potential customer that you don't take this seriously. 1920x1080. Always.

A Note on Steam's Autoplay and Microtrailers

Two technical details that affect how your trailer actually performs on Steam:

Autoplay. Your first trailer autoplays (muted) when someone visits your store page. This means your trailer's opening frames are essentially a silent film. If those opening seconds are a black screen or a static logo, the autoplay shows nothing. The viewer sees a blank rectangle where excitement should be. Design your trailer's opening to work as a silent, auto-playing hook.

Microtrailers. Steam automatically generates a six-second looping "microtrailer" from your first listed video. It pulls six one-second clips from various points in the trailer and stitches them together. These appear in category hubs, sale pages, and the homepage during seasonal events. You can't control which six seconds Steam picks, but you can ensure your trailer is dense with visually interesting moments throughout, not just at the beginning and end. If your trailer has a 15-second slow section in the middle, one of those six auto-selected clips will probably come from it.

Final Thought

You spent years making your game. Spend more than a weekend on the assets that sell it. A great trailer converts browsers into wishlisters. Great screenshots stop scrollers in their tracks. A professional press kit with downloadable assets makes the difference between journalists covering your game and journalists moving on to the next pitch in their inbox.

The best part? These assets compound. A strong trailer works on your Steam page, in your press kit, on social media, in showcase submissions, and in publisher pitch decks. A strong screenshot set does the same. Build them once, build them right, and they'll sell your game for you across every channel, every platform, and every opportunity that comes your way.

Your game deserves better than a two-hour trailer edit the night before you publish your Steam page. You wouldn't ship a build you playtested for five minutes. Give your trailer the same respect you give your code.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I hire a professional trailer editor or do it myself?

If your budget allows $1,000-5,000 and your game looks good but your DIY trailer feels flat, hiring a pro is probably the highest-ROI marketing spend available. If your budget is zero or you enjoy editing, DIY is viable with DaVinci Resolve (free) and 15-20 hours of focused work. I've tested both approaches across multiple projects, and the quality gap is real but bridgeable with effort.

How many screenshots does Steam require vs. how many should I include?

Steam requires minimum 5, but 6-8 is the sweet spot. Going above 10 has diminishing returns. Each screenshot should answer a new question about your game rather than showing the same dungeon with slightly different enemies.

Should I include UI in my screenshots?

Mix it up. Start with UI-on screenshots that show your game in its natural played state (this helps genre fans understand your systems), but include one or two UI-free screenshots for art direction showcase. For your press kit, include both versions since journalists want clean images for article headers.

When should I cut my announce trailer vs. my launch trailer?

Different purposes. Announce trailers sell the concept and vibe, can be shorter (30-60s), and work with non-final assets. Launch trailers show the polished final product and convert wishlisters to buyers. Replace your announce trailer with the launch trailer as the first video on your Steam page when you ship.

Dive deeper into each aspect of trailers & screenshots:

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