Valve admits it's 'running behind' on approving Steam games because it has to keep re-reviewing them, which surely has nothing to do with AI

A new kind of Steam problem has emerged: Games keep missing their release dates because Valve can't keep up with approving them.

Several frustrated indie devs have publicly posted about the limbo status of their finished games in the past week—including the developers of Food Devils, Wheel Make It, and Cubic Earth—saying that their applications have gone unanswered after up to 20 days, despite Valve's listed review window of three to five business days.

In the case of Cubic Earth, developer structmira hasn't been able to contact Valve and has no choice but to wait. "Our game's trailer amassed more than 60,000 views on YouTube, and we had more than 6,000 wishlists," the developer told PC Gamer over email. "Now, our Steam Community page is rapidly filling with player complaints, and we've lost all momentum."

Valve commented on the backlog today in the form of a Steamworks update aimed at helping developers pass the preview process. In it, the company admitted that it's "running a little behind" with wait times that are up to double the usual.

"We aim to test every game build in a timely manner, typically within 3-5 days. However, we're running a little behind right now and taking up to 12 business days," Valve's FAQ reads. "Much of that delay is due to having to re-review games, which isn't great for you or for us."

The update itself is, primarily, a new series of checklists that places the onus on developers to submit better applications that "pass review quickly the first time." The most significant new requirement is to have "run your game through Steam for at least five minutes" to make sure it functions correctly, which you'd think wouldn't need to be said. The tone of Valve's request suggests that it's also surprised by the state of some of the games it's being asked to approve..

"Believe it or not, sometimes we review builds that have not ever been played through Steam," the update reads. "This means that even if a game runs smoothly when a dev launches their executable directly, they might have missed basic steps that would impact a user installing and playing via Steam."

Other checks include confirming which of those "common redistributables" a game needs before submission, confirming cloud saves and achievements are in order, and adding a minimum of five screenshots to the store page that depict gameplay (another obvious, but apparently necessary standard).

Though Valve did not comment on why a logjam in its processes has developed only recently, despite the number of new Steam games rising rapidly every year, the elephant in the room is AI.

New language models capable of whipping up functioning games very quickly, and Valve's laissez-faire curation, has prompted an explosion of AI slop games on Steam in the past few months—most of which don't receive much visibility, unless you're unlucky enough to browse Steam Next Fest without the "personalized" mode on. A Valve developer recently acknowledged that there's a slop problem on Steam, but said that they don't want to "be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use."

If you look at today's update through that lens, perhaps Valve isn't so much speaking to experienced developers with these obvious-sounding guidelines, but vibe coders who lack basic game dev understanding. Also today, Itch.io announced that it deleted "a couple terabytes of AI slop" from its videogame storefront to combat the wave of low-quality games appearing online.

Whatever the cause of the holdup, Valve said more changes are coming to the build review process, but this is a "great starting point."