Several indie developers have spent the past few weeks complaining on social media that Steam is taking far longer than usual to approve their games for release. In some cases the delay has forced studios to miss launch dates they had already announced to players.

What is new

Studio Daimon submitted its early access game Food Devils for review on October 12th, expecting to launch today. According to game director Alfred Kamon, the game is "still awaiting approval" and the studio does not know when Steam will give it the final go-ahead. Kamon said a follow-up support ticket flagging the urgency of the situation was also ignored.

This is not an isolated case. In October, publisher 2 Left Thumbs said it missed the planned launch of Wheel Make It by nearly two weeks because of long waits for build reviews. The studio detailed its own setbacks in a Steam post, including a failed review triggered by a single menu option that was not accessible with a controller.

How Steam's review process works

Before a game can go live on Steam, Valve checks both the store page and the actual build to make sure they meet the platform's rules, covering things like accurate descriptions, working controller support and basic functionality. Valve's own developer documentation says this review "typically takes 3-5 business days to complete," and it advises developers to submit at least 7 business days before they want a page to go live, to leave room for fixes.

Those estimates no longer seem to hold. In a new post published after developers' complaints began circulating, Valve acknowledged a "significant increase in submissions for store and page review in recent months" and said it is "running a little behind right now," with reviews now taking up to 12 business days. The company said much of the slowdown comes from having to re-review games, meaning builds are failing checks and being sent back, which adds extra rounds to the queue.

Why it matters

For small studios, a launch date is often tied to marketing pushes, press coverage, streamer partnerships and limited savings. A review delay of two or three weeks can undercut all of that, which is why developers like Kamon and 2 Left Thumbs are speaking out publicly rather than quietly waiting.

The developers' working theory is that Steam's review queue is clogged by what they call "AI slop": a flood of low-effort or mass-produced games, many built quickly with AI tools, that are submitted for review alongside legitimate releases. Because every submission has to go through the same manual queue, a surge of low-quality entries can slow down everyone, including developers who have spent years on a single project.

The numbers given in the report support the idea that submission volume has jumped sharply, even if they do not prove AI is the specific cause. October's Steam Next Fest, a recurring event where developers release demos, listed 7,240 games, a 65.2 percent increase over the event held in June, according to the tracking site How to Market a Game. Separately, a Reddit user analysing Steam data found that 49.9 percent of all games released since Valve began requiring an AI-use disclosure label in 2024 now carry that disclosure.

  • Studio Daimon's Food Devils, submitted October 12th, remains unapproved past its planned early access launch date
  • 2 Left Thumbs' Wheel Make It launched nearly two weeks late after a review delay, including a rejection over one controller-inaccessible menu option
  • Valve's documented review target is 3-5 business days; it now says reviews can take up to 12 business days
  • October's Steam Next Fest listed 7,240 games, up 65.2 percent from June, per How to Market a Game
  • An independent analysis found 49.9 percent of games released since 2024 now carry Valve's required AI-use disclosure label
  • Itch.io said the number of new game pages created per day has doubled in the past two months and reported deleting "a couple terabytes of ai slop"

What Valve is doing about it

In its new post, Valve said it has updated its release checklist for developers, which now requires them to run their game through Steam for at least five minutes before submitting it, presumably to catch basic problems before a human reviewer gets to them. The company also said further improvements to the build review process are on the way, without giving specifics on what those changes will involve or when they will arrive.

Steam is not the only storefront dealing with this. Itch.io, a smaller platform popular with hobbyist and experimental developers, said last weekend that the number of game pages being created per day has doubled over the past two months. The platform also said it had just deleted a couple of terabytes of what it called AI slop.

Limits and open questions

The connection between AI-generated games and the slower review times is, for now, a suspicion voiced by affected developers rather than something Valve has confirmed as the cause. Valve's own explanation points to a general rise in submissions and the need to re-review games that fail checks, without singling out AI tools specifically. It is also not clear from Valve's statement how long the backlog will take to clear, what the promised process improvements will look like, or whether the new five-minute playtest requirement will meaningfully reduce the number of builds that need a second review. For developers currently waiting on approval, including Studio Daimon, the practical effect is the same regardless of the exact cause: launch dates that were planned around a normal review window are slipping, sometimes by weeks.

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