Overview
- Valve confirmed it is taking up to 12 business days to review store pages and builds, up from its typical three to five business days.
- The company updated its release checklist to require developers to run a build through Steam for at least five minutes and to confirm redistributables, achievements, cloud saves and five gameplay screenshots.
- Several indie teams report multi-week waits and missed launch dates, with examples including Studio Daimon’s Food Devils and publisher 2 Left Thumbs’ Wheel Make It, which lost promotional momentum and drew community complaints.
- Submission volume has surged—October’s Steam Next Fest listed 7,240 games, a roughly 65% rise over June—and other platforms such as Itch.io have removed large amounts of low-quality, reportedly AI-generated uploads.
- Valve says more improvements to the build-review workflow are coming, but the new checklist shifts more of the basic verification work onto developers and could change how small teams prepare for launch.