Indie games are missing launch dates because Steam is backed up

Many indie game developers have recently posted on social media about unexpectedly long approval wait times for their game submissions on Steam, with some of the approvals causing developers to miss their planned launch dates. For example, Studio Daimon, the team behind an upcoming title called Food Devils, had planned to launch the game in early access today after submitting its build on October 12th. But the game is “still awaiting approval,” according to a post from game director Alfred Kamon. “Even now, we don’t know when Steam will give us the final OK to finally release our game. We sent another ticket last week saying that the situation was urgent and that we might miss our release date because of this, but it also got ignored.” In October, publisher 2 Left Thumbs said it missed its planned launch of Wheel Make It “by nearly two weeks” due to the long wait for build reviews. You can read some details about the studio’s setbacks, including failing a review for a “one single option in the menu” not being accessible with a controller, in a Steam post. There are lots of other recent posts about review build waits as well. Valve says on a Steam developer website that a review of a game’s store presence “typically takes 3-5 business days to complete,” though the company suggests submitting a page for review “at least 7 business days before you want it live to account for potential changes you’ll need to make.” However, as of late, Steam has seemingly been grappling with a sharp increase in games; October’s Steam Next Fest had 7,240 games, a 65.2 percent increase over June’s Steam Next Fest, according to How to Market a Game. A Reddit user also found that 49.9 percent of all games released since Valve started asking developers in 2024 to label games that use AI now have an AI disclosure. Kamon and 2 Left Thumbs suspect the longer waits are due to “slop” slowing down the process. “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,” said Kamon. In a new post from Valve published after we first ran this story, the company acknowledged that following a “a significant increase in submissions for store and page review in recent months,” it’s “running a little behind right now” and taking “up to 12 business days” for reviews, saying that much of the delay is “having to re-review games.” It has updated its release checklist for developers, including requiring them to run a game through Steam for at least five minutes. Valve also says that further improvements are on the way for the build review process. Itch.io has also been dealing with a rise in games, with the platform saying last weekend that “The number of game pages being created per-day has doubled in the past 2 months.” Last night, the platform said it “Just deleted a couple terabytes of ai slop 😌” Update, November 3rd: Added new post from Valve.