Valve has confirmed what indie developers have been complaining about for weeks: Steam’s review queue is backed up, and some games are missing their launch dates. According to The Verge AI, Valve now says reviews are taking “up to 12 business days” after “a significant increase in submissions for store and page review in recent months.” Its developer site says a store page review “typically takes 3-5 business days,” so the current wait can run more than double that.
The quick read
- The problem: Developers report long approval waits, and at least two teams say the delays hit their launch plans.
- Valve’s explanation: It’s “running a little behind right now,” and much of the delay comes from “having to re-review games.”
- The fix so far: Valve updated its release checklist and says more build review improvements are coming.
- The AI question: Developers suspect AI slop is clogging the queue. That’s still unproven.
Who’s getting hit
Studio Daimon submitted its build for Food Devils on October 12th and planned an early access launch on the day The Verge first ran its story. The game was “still awaiting approval,” according to game director Alfred Kamon, who said an urgent support ticket “got ignored.”
Publisher 2 Left Thumbs said it missed its planned launch of Wheel Make It “by nearly two weeks.” One of its setbacks was a failed review because “one single option in the menu” couldn’t be reached with a controller. For a small team with a marketing plan tied to one date, that’s a painful way to lose two weeks.
What the numbers show
The volume jump looks big, even if the cause is harder to pin down:
- October’s Steam Next Fest had 7,240 games, up 65.2 percent from June’s event, according to How to Market a Game.
- A Reddit user found that 49.9 percent of games released since Valve began asking for AI labels in 2024 now carry an AI disclosure.
- Itch.io says “The number of game pages being created per-day has doubled in the past 2 months.” It also said it “Just deleted a couple terabytes of ai slop 😌”
Kamon isn’t subtle about his theory: “We can only assume it’s because Steam’s review queue is clogged up by AI slop, but the whole process is now taking several weeks for some developers.”
I’d treat that as a strong suspicion, not a finding. Valve’s post, as The Verge describes it, points to more submissions and re-reviews. It doesn’t appear to put the blame on AI. The 49.9 percent figure also comes from a Reddit user’s count, and an AI disclosure doesn’t tell you a game is bad.
Why re-reviews are the detail to watch
What stands out here is Valve’s focus on re-reviews. Think of a restaurant kitchen where half the plates keep coming back. New orders wait because the cooks are redoing old ones.
That fits Valve’s new checklist, which requires developers to run a game through Steam for at least five minutes. It’s a very low bar, which suggests Valve is trying to catch basic failures before they take up a reviewer’s time. We don’t know how many re-reviews involve AI-assisted games, and that’s the number that would settle this argument.
Why this matters beyond gaming
AI tools have made it much cheaper to produce things, but checking those things still takes people and time. We’ve seen this before. In 2023, the sci-fi magazine Clarkesworld temporarily closed submissions after a flood of AI-written stories, and open source maintainers have complained about AI-generated bug reports.
Steam is a much bigger version of that same squeeze. Even if AI turns out to be only part of the surge, any platform with human review should be watching this one. The cost lands on everyone in line, including teams who spent years on their game.
What developers should do now
- Plan for 12 business days or more. That’s about two and a half weeks, and a failed review can add to it.
- Run the new checklist first. Include the five-minute test through Steam.
- Check the small stuff. Wheel Make It’s story shows that one menu option can cost you a review.
- Be careful with public dates. If you can, wait for approval before locking in a launch date.
Valve hasn’t said when its next build review changes will arrive, according to The Verge’s report. Until they do, the safest assumption is that the line stays long, and The Verge has more details on the developers caught in it.