Store-page languages: which ones are worth it
Short version from Valve's own localization documentation: localization favors discoverability, Valve itself points you at the hardware survey language row to size each market, and the closer a language's speakers are to not reading English, the more a translation returns. Quotes below are verbatim from the page.
“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.”
“Steam favors products that are localized.”
And the honest caveat, also verbatim:
“Language support is determined by the in-game language settings, not the store page (though if your product is localized, you should consider localizing your store page as well).”
So the store page languages are the visible half of the decision — the in-game localization is the part Steam weighs. Both are listed in the same place in your game's edit page, and Valve explicitly suggests releasing additional languages as an update, announced through Community Announcements.
The language row of the Steam hardware survey (September 2026)
| Language | Share of Steam users |
|---|---|
| English | 34.20% |
| Simplified Chinese | 31.39% |
| Russian | 9.05% |
| Spanish - Spain | 4.08% |
| Portuguese-Brazil | 3.70% |
| German | 2.48% |
| Japanese | 2.41% |
| French | 2.08% |
| Polish | 1.49% |
| Korean | 1.37% |
| Traditional Chinese | 1.27% |
| Turkish | 1.09% |
| Thai | 0.82% |
| Spanish - Latin America | 0.75% |
| Ukrainian | 0.66% |
| Italian | 0.56% |
| Czech | 0.50% |
| Hungarian | 0.32% |
| Portuguese - Portugal | 0.31% |
| Vietnamese | 0.25% |
| Swedish | 0.23% |
| Dutch | 0.23% |
| Danish | 0.19% |
| Indonesian | 0.15% |
| Finnish | 0.13% |
| Norwegian | 0.11% |
| Romanian | 0.10% |
| Greek | 0.05% |
| Bulgarian | 0.04% |
| Arabic | 0.00% |
| Malay | 0.00% |
“For an idea of language usage across the whole Steam user base, check out the latest Steam Hardware survey and select the 'language' row to expand for details.”
How to read it: English and Simplified Chinese together cover roughly two-thirds of users, and the long tail below 1% is dozens of languages that usually return less than they cost at small scale. A practical order: your engine's cheapest locales first (Simplified Chinese, the big European set: German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian), then the rest where your genre and your audience justify it. Nothing predicts wishlists or sales — this is a sizing aid, not a forecast.
What your peers support
The USD 29 report lists every language your 10 nearest same-tag games support that your page doesn't, each with its survey share, so you decide with the same numbers Valve points at instead of guessing. Run the free single-game check first.