Steam Page Localization: Should You Translate Your Store Page?
Over 60% of Steam users run the platform in a language other than English. That's not a guess. That's Valve's own number from their Steamworks documentation: "Over 60% of Steam users use it in a language other than English, so tailoring your experience for those users is important."
TL;DR: Translating your store page is cheap ($100-300 per language) and directly increases algorithmic visibility. Start with Simplified Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Store page localization is separate from game localization and has faster ROI.
Key Takeaways
- Steam deprioritizes games in recommendations for users whose language isn't supported.
- Store page localization is dramatically cheaper than full game localization.
- Priority languages: Simplified Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish, then Portuguese (Brazilian), Korean.
- Use your regional wishlist data to guide priorities. Translate into languages where you're already seeing interest.
- Community translation programs can cut costs but need QA review by native speakers.
If your game only has an English store page and English-only in-game language support, Steam's recommendation algorithm is less likely to show your game to the majority of its user base. You're invisible to most of the platform before anyone even evaluates your capsule art or description. It's like building a shop and only unlocking one door out of five.
This guide covers when and how to localize your Steam store page, which languages give the best return, and how to think about store page translation versus full game localization. For the full picture on store page setup, read our Steam Page Optimization guide. For how localization connects to your wishlist strategy, we'll cover that too.
How Language Support Affects Steam Visibility
Steamworks documentation states: "Steam favors products that are localized. Language support is determined by the in-game language settings."
The visibility FAQ is more direct: Steam uses your declared language support to decide who sees your game in recommendations. If your game supports only English, Steam deprioritizes it in recommendations for players who set their Steam client to Simplified Chinese, Russian, German, or any other non-English language.
There are two separate language signals that Steam tracks:
In-game language support: The languages you declare on your Steamworks app configuration page (Subtitles, Interface, Full Audio). This is the primary signal Steam uses for language-based recommendation filtering.
Store page translation: The localized versions of your store page text, screenshots, and trailers. This is separate from in-game support. You can translate your store page into a language without translating your game, and vice versa.
Both matter, but in-game language support carries more weight for visibility. That said, translating your store page is dramatically cheaper and faster than translating your entire game, and it removes a friction point for international players evaluating your game.
Which Languages Matter Most
Not all languages deliver equal return. The answer depends on your game's genre, aesthetic, and where your existing audience is concentrated. But there are clear tiers based on Steam's user demographics and market data.
Tier 1: The Big Five (Highest Impact)
English The baseline. If you're reading this article, you probably already have this covered. English is the most widely supported language on Steam and serves as the fallback for many bilingual users.
Simplified Chinese China is the largest single-country Steam market by user count. The Steam Hardware Survey consistently shows Simplified Chinese as one of the top languages. Certain genres are especially popular with Chinese players: survival craft, city builders, strategy games, roguelikes, and management sims. If your game falls into any of these categories, Chinese localization is close to mandatory.
Russian Russia and the CIS countries represent a massive Steam audience. Russian-speaking players are especially active in survival, shooter, strategy, and RPG genres. Russian is also one of the less expensive languages to translate into, with a large pool of experienced game translators.
German Germany is the largest PC gaming market in Europe. German Steam users have strong purchasing power and are active across simulation, strategy, and RPG genres. German localization has good ROI for games in these categories.
Japanese Japan's PC gaming market has grown substantially in recent years, partly driven by the success of indie games on Steam. Japanese players tend to favor RPGs, visual novels, action games, and anything with strong art direction. Japanese localization is more expensive per word than most European languages, but the audience loyalty and conversion rates are often high.
Tier 2: Strong Secondary Markets
Spanish (Latin American and Spain) Large combined audience across multiple countries. Relatively affordable translation. Good for action, adventure, and multiplayer games.
Portuguese (Brazilian) Brazil is a significant Steam market. Brazilian Portuguese is affordable to translate and serves a large, enthusiastic audience.
Korean Growing PC gaming audience with strong interest in RPGs, roguelikes, and competitive games.
French Solid European market. France has a healthy PC gaming community, particularly for strategy, adventure, and indie-focused genres.
Polish, Turkish, Italian Smaller but active communities. Often worth including if you're already translating into several languages, since the marginal cost is low.
Using Your Own Data
Steamworks gives you regional wishlist data. In the Sales & Activation Reports portal, check "Regional sales report" for your game. If 15% of your wishlists are coming from China and you haven't translated anything into Chinese, that's a clear signal.
Valve's documentation suggests exactly this approach: "If you translate the content on your store page into languages that you are considering supporting, you can look at regional wishlists for your game to get a sense of where your game might be popular and which languages might warrant higher priority for translation."
Translate the store page first into your top wishlist regions, watch whether wishlist growth accelerates in those regions, and use that data to justify full game localization. Developers who follow this data-driven approach consistently report that store page translation ROI is measurable within weeks—you can see the regional wishlist numbers respond almost immediately.
Store Page Localization vs. Game Localization
These are two different things with very different costs.
Store Page Localization
What it covers:
- Short description (~300 characters)
- Long description ("About This Game," typically 500-1,500 words)
- Screenshot text (localized versions of screenshots that contain readable text)
- Trailer subtitles or localized trailer versions
- Localized application name (optional, set in Steamworks Settings)
- Community announcements
How to do it: In Steamworks, every text editor has a language dropdown in the top right corner. Click it, select the target language, and paste in your translated copy. For screenshots, drag and drop localized versions onto existing thumbnails. Valve's system uses filename suffixes (like foo_japanese.jpg) to hint at the language.
Estimated cost: For a typical indie game with a moderate-length description, expect $100-300 per language for store page translation from a professional translator. That's for the text only. Localized screenshot re-creation (if your screenshots have text overlays) adds to the cost but is usually minor.
Time to complete: A few days per language, assuming you have the copy finalized.
Full Game Localization
What it covers:
- All in-game UI text
- Dialogue and narrative text
- Tutorials and help text
- Item names, descriptions, tooltips
- Subtitles and/or full audio dubbing
Estimated cost: Wildly variable. A text-light game (platformer, puzzle game with minimal text) might cost $500-2,000 per language for interface localization. A text-heavy game (RPG, visual novel, story-driven adventure) can cost $5,000-20,000+ per language, depending on word count and complexity. Full audio dubbing multiplies costs further.
Time to complete: Weeks to months per language, depending on scope.
The Strategic Order
For most indie devs, the smart sequence is:
- Localize the store page into your top 3-5 target languages. Cheap, fast, immediate visibility impact.
- Monitor regional wishlist data to see which languages generate the most traction.
- Localize the game into the languages that show the strongest ROI signal from store page data.
- Announce each new language as a game update. Use a Community Announcement and consider activating an Update Visibility Round.
Valve's best practices doc recommends exactly this: "Release additional languages as an update. Use the Community Announcements and Update Visibility Round tools to let customers know about your new content."
Community Translation Programs
Some indie devs tap their communities for translation help. This can work, but it comes with risks.
How It Works
Set up a shared document or localization platform (Crowdin, Weblate, or even a Google Sheet). Invite multilingual community members to contribute translations. Review and QA the results before shipping.
Benefits
- Free (no direct translation costs)
- Community members understand your game's context and tone
- Builds community engagement and ownership
- Can cover many languages quickly
Risks
- Quality varies enormously. Enthusiastic fans aren't always accurate translators.
- No accountability. Volunteers can disappear mid-project.
- Cultural nuance may be missed. Machine-translated fragments sometimes sneak in.
- You still need QA. Even community translations need review by a native speaker.
Mitigation
If you go the community route, treat it like a draft process. Community members provide the first pass. You hire a professional translator (or a bilingual QA reviewer) to check the output for each language. This hybrid approach can cut costs significantly while maintaining quality.
Valve's documentation mentions this possibility: "If you have close communication with members of your community that speak other languages, you may be able to get feedback directly from your players. Think about whether you can set up a way for them to provide you that feedback once you start supporting other languages."
Cost vs. ROI: Is It Worth It?
For store page localization, the ROI math is almost always positive.
Consider: translating your store page into Simplified Chinese costs roughly $150-300. If that translation leads to even 50 additional wishlists from Chinese-speaking Steam users, and those wishlists convert at the typical rate of 10-15% over the game's lifetime, that's 5-7 additional sales. At a $15-20 price point, you've already broken even.
In practice, the numbers are usually much higher. A localized store page doesn't generate 50 wishlists. It unlocks algorithmic visibility to an entire language cohort. If Steam starts recommending your game to Chinese-speaking users who previously never saw it, the wishlist and revenue impact compounds over months and years.
The less a language looks like English, the higher the expected return. Valve's localization best practices page says this directly: "The less a language looks like English, the higher the expected return. Many customers in Asian territories for example do not speak English, while many customers in European countries do."
This means Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Russian are likely to yield higher marginal returns per dollar spent on localization than German, French, or Spanish, where many users are comfortable reading English. In practice, developers who prioritize Asian language localization often see disproportionate wishlist growth from those regions—the audiences are large and underserved by English-only indie games.
Localization Pitfalls to Avoid
Don't Confuse Language With Geography
Valve's documentation makes this point explicitly: "Customers on Steam speak different languages and their preferences vary independently of their geographic location." A Simplified Chinese speaker might be in Canada. A Japanese speaker might be in Brazil. Language settings are per-user, not per-region.
This also means: if you add Japanese language support, make it available globally. Don't region-lock language content.
Don't Use Machine Translation Alone
Google Translate and DeepL have improved dramatically, but they still produce output that native speakers immediately recognize as machine-generated. Awkward phrasing, wrong tone, contextual errors. For store page copy, where every sentence is selling your game, machine-translated text can actively hurt conversions.
Use machine translation as a starting point for a human translator to refine. Or use it for internal reference while you hire professionals for the final copy.
Don't Forget Localized Screenshots
If your screenshots contain readable text (UI elements, dialogue, tutorial text), non-English-speaking players will see gibberish. Steamworks supports localized screenshot variants. Upload them. If creating localized screenshots feels like too much work, consider making your primary screenshots gameplay-focused with minimal text, so they work for all languages.
Don't Localize Into Languages You Can't Support In-Game
If your store page is translated into Japanese but your game has zero Japanese language support, Japanese-speaking players will feel misled. They clicked through a Japanese store page expecting a Japanese game experience.
There's a middle ground: translate the store page AND clearly indicate on the language support chart that the game is English-only. Some players will still wishlist and buy, especially if they're comfortable with English gameplay but prefer to browse in their native language. But be transparent.
The Localization Workflow
- Write your English store page first. Finalize the short description, long description, and any screenshot text.
- Choose your target languages. Use the tier list above and your regional wishlist data.
- Get quotes from translation vendors. Valve's documentation recommends asking vendors for a list of games they've worked on and what exactly they did on those projects.
- Translate the store page text. Short description, long description, community announcements.
- Create localized screenshots if your screenshots contain readable text.
- Upload to Steamworks. Use the language dropdown in the text editor. Drag localized screenshots onto existing thumbnails.
- Set in-game language support in your Steamworks configuration if you've also localized the game.
- Monitor. Track regional wishlist data to measure impact.
Connecting Localization to Your Press Kit
If your store page is available in multiple languages, your press kit should reflect that. Journalists in non-English markets are more likely to cover your game if they can access localized press materials.
On presskit.gg, include localized descriptions and fact sheets alongside your English materials. A Japanese gaming outlet is far more likely to write about your game if they can pull a Japanese-language description directly from your press kit instead of translating it themselves.
This circles back to the broader principle: your store page copy and your press kit copy should be aligned. If you're translating one, translate the other.
The Bottom Line
Translating your Steam store page is one of the cheapest, highest-ROI marketing moves available to indie devs. For a few hundred dollars per language, you unlock algorithmic visibility to millions of non-English Steam users who would otherwise never see your game. What tends to happen in practice is that developers who localize early see compounding benefits over time—each month of visibility in new markets adds wishlists that would have been impossible otherwise.
Start with store page localization for your top 3-5 languages. Use regional wishlist data to prioritize. Pair localization with in-game language support when feasible. And remember Valve's own guidance: over 60% of Steam users operate in a language other than English. If your store page speaks only English, you're marketing to less than half the platform. That's a lot of potential players locked behind a language barrier you hold the key to.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Should I translate the store page before the game itself?
Yes. Store page localization is faster, cheaper, and immediately affects visibility. Use regional wishlist data from the translated store page to justify full game localization later.
Can I use machine translation for my store page?
As a starting point for human translators to refine, yes. As the final product, no. Native speakers immediately recognize machine-translated text, and awkward phrasing hurts conversions.
What if my store page is translated but my game isn't?
Be transparent. Translate the store page AND clearly indicate on the language support chart that the game is English-only. Some players will still wishlist and buy if they're comfortable with English gameplay.
How do I find good game translators?
Valve recommends asking vendors for a list of games they've worked on. Check references. Translation quality varies enormously, and game-specific context matters.
Related Guides
This article is part of our series on steam page optimization. Start with the complete guide:
Also in this series: