Valve has now put a number on the wait. In a Steamworks announcement posted on November 3, the company says it's "running a little behind right now" on game build reviews and "taking up to 12 business days". The usual target is "typically within 3-5 days".
The cause, by Valve's account, is volume plus repeat work. "We've seen a significant increase in submissions for store and page review in recent months," it writes, adding that it has spent "the last several weeks" scaling up. Then the bit developers will circle: "Much of that delay is due to having to re-review games, which isn't great for you or for us."
The new checklist
Valve's answer is a tougher pre-release checklist, aimed at stopping basic failures before a reviewer ever opens the build. The post lists these additions:
- Five minutes on Steam. Developers must launch through the green Play button and run the game for at least five minutes. "Believe it or not, sometimes we review builds that have not ever been played through Steam," Valve says. Any user's playtime counts, as long as it falls within the past seven days or since the last build.
- Redistributables. Developers have to say which common packages, such as DirectX or Visual C++, Steam should install, or state that the game needs none.
- Achievements. New checks flag incomplete setups, including missing names and icons.
- Steam Cloud. Games that advertise it now need a save written to Steam Cloud by a member of the partner group.
- Screenshots. At least five must be categorised as gameplay.
Build submissions also now surface dynamic reminders based on what the store page promises, such as languages or multiplayer. Valve says more improvements are coming, but it gives no date for reviews returning to normal.
What the wait has cost
The post lands after weeks of complaints. Kotaku reports that developers have been posting about reviews stretching to two or three weeks or more. It says Caravarn Carnage: Fruity Road was submitted on October 16 and approved on November 1, and that Ashen Legacy, submitted on October 15, was also approved on November 1, ahead of a planned November 6 release.
Kotaku also spoke to Alfred Kamon, director of Food Devils at nine-person Italian outfit Studio Daimon. The game was submitted on October 12 and due out on November 3, but Kotaku reports it was still waiting for approval that day. Kamon wants Valve to be upfront: "Tell us it may take weeks. Just don't promise us three to five days because then we make plans around the release date."
GamesRadar+ tracked a rougher case. Wheel Make It was meant to launch on October 12, wasn't approved until October 25 and came out on November 1. Publisher 2 Left Thumbs says it had more than 11,000 wishlists, and GamesRadar+ cites SteamDB figures showing a 24-hour peak of 15 players. The game did fail review at least once, GamesRadar+ notes, over a resolution setting that couldn't be reached with a controller.
The AI question stays open
Many of these developers blame a flood of AI-generated games. Valve's post doesn't. It talks about submission numbers and re-reviews, and it mentions AI only as something reviewers compare against a game's content survey.
Kotaku points to around 4,000 Steam releases in October, with nearly half disclosing some generative AI use, but says nobody can prove that's behind the delays. GamesRadar+ likewise says it's unclear how much AI-aided games have slowed the pipeline.
Jax's take: Twelve business days is more than double the old promise, but a real number beats a cheerful one, and devs can finally plan around it. The five-minute rule sounds like a joke until you realise Valve needed to write it down. Just don't confuse a better checklist with a fix. If submissions keep climbing, fewer re-reviews only buys Valve time.
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