Getting a game approved for Steam is taking far longer than Valve says it should, and the company has now put a number on it. According to Video Games Chronicle, Valve told developers in a message on its Steamworks development news page that it aims to test builds "typically within 3-5 days", but is "running a little behind right now and taking up to 12 business days".
Valve's explanation, as VGC quotes it, is that "much of that delay is due to having to re-review games, which isn't great for you or for us." On Valve's account, then, games failing on the first pass are a big part of what's holding up the queue.
A note on sourcing: we couldn't read Valve's Steamworks post directly, because its text didn't come through to our research tools. Everything Valve says here is as quoted by VGC, PC Gamer and GamesRadar+.
Who it's hurting
The delay isn't abstract for smaller studios, because a release date is usually a promise to an audience. PC Gamer reports that several indie developers have posted publicly about their finished games sitting in limbo in the past week, including the teams behind *Food Devils*, *Wheel Make It* and *Cubic Earth*, and that their applications went unanswered for up to 20 days.
*Cubic Earth* developer structmira told PC Gamer that the game's trailer had passed 60,000 views on YouTube and that it had more than 6,000 wishlists. "Now, our Steam Community page is rapidly filling with player complaints, and we've lost all momentum," the developer said. VGC also points to a post from a developer of *Little Crossroads*, who said a playtest took two weeks to be approved.
What developers now have to check
Valve's fix, for now, is a tighter checklist. VGC reports that developers must run their game through Steam for at least five minutes before submitting a build, specify which common redistributables such as DirectX, Visual C++, .NET and XNA need to be installed, and make sure achievements are ready. Steam Cloud saves have to work properly if the game supports them, and at least five of the supplied screenshots must be specified as gameplay.
The five-minute rule sounds almost too basic to need writing down, and Valve seems to know it. "Believe it or not, sometimes we review builds that have not ever been played through Steam," the company said, in a passage quoted by both VGC and PC Gamer. A game can run smoothly from its executable, Valve explained, while missing basic steps that would affect someone installing and playing through Steam.
Valve also said more is coming. "More improvements are coming to the build review process, but these initial changes are a great starting point," it wrote, according to VGC. The same message acknowledged how stressful the longer waits have been for developers.
The question Valve didn't answer
PC Gamer says Valve didn't comment on why the logjam has developed only recently. GamesRadar+ quotes the update as citing "a significant increase in submissions for store page and build review in recent months", and notes that it doesn't mention AI.
Both outlets draw that connection themselves. PC Gamer calls AI "the elephant in the room" and points to a rise in low-quality AI-made games on Steam, while GamesRadar+ frames the changes against the clones and vibe-coded titles that have appeared on the store. That link is their reading, not something Valve has stated.
Mason's take: The checklist reads like a small housekeeping change, but I think it says something bigger about where Steam is right now. My inference, and it's only that, is that the review queue has become the place where the cost of cheap submissions gets paid, and the people paying it are studios with a finished game and a date they already promised. I'd argue Valve's openness has long been Steam's selling point, but a human review step only keeps working if it can keep up with what's being sent to it, and a 12-day wait suggests that's now the real test.
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