Some indie developers are waiting weeks for Steam to approve game submissions, and the delays have pushed planned launch dates out of reach. The reports raise a practical challenge for small teams: a release date can depend on a review process whose timing they cannot control.
When a planned release meets a long review queue
Studio Daimon had planned to release its game Food Devils in early access today. The team had submitted its build on October 12th, but game director Alfred Kamon said it was still awaiting approval.
In a post, Kamon said the studio did not know when Steam would give the final approval. The team had filed another ticket the previous week, explaining that the delay could make it miss its release date, but Kamon said that ticket also went unanswered.
The account illustrates how a review delay can affect more than a launch announcement. A team may have set a date and submitted its build, yet still lack the approval needed to release as planned.
Other developers report missed dates
Publisher 2 Left Thumbs said in October that a lengthy wait for build reviews caused it to miss the planned launch of Wheel Make It “by nearly two weeks.” The publisher also described a review failure over a single menu option that could not be accessed with a controller.
That example points to two different sources of friction in the review process: developers may need to address a specific issue, and then wait for a review of the build. The source does not establish how much time each stage took in this case, but the publisher connected the overall delay to the long wait for reviews.
Other developers have also posted recently about waiting for build reviews. Taken together, these reports describe a problem that can disrupt scheduling, though they do not establish how often delays are occurring across Steam.
Official guidance and rising submission volume
Valve’s Steam developer website says a review of a game’s store presence “typically takes 3-5 business days to complete.” It advises developers to submit a page for review “at least 7 business days before you want it live” to leave time for changes that may be needed.
Those timeframes give developers a planning reference, but recent accounts describe waits considerably longer than a few business days. The guidance concerns a game’s store presence, while the reports also discuss build reviews, so the two review types should not be treated as identical.
The article points to signs of increased activity on game platforms. 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.
These figures show a large volume of games and disclosures, but they do not by themselves explain the review delays. Kamon and 2 Left Thumbs suspect that “slop” is slowing the process. Kamon said the team could only assume Steam’s review queue was clogged by AI slop. Valve did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
A broader workload on game platforms
Steam is not the only platform reporting more activity. Itch.io said the number of game pages created per day had doubled in the past 2 months. The platform also said it had deleted a couple terabytes of AI slop.
That context makes growing submission volume a possible pressure on platform reviews, but the available accounts do not confirm it as the cause of Steam’s longer waits. For developers, the immediate effect is clearer: a submitted game may not be ready to go live when its team expects.
When the approval date is uncertain, launch plans become harder to keep. Developers can follow Valve’s published lead time for store-page reviews, but the recent reports show that some teams have faced waits extending beyond that window. Until the cause and scope of the delays are clearer, the accounts leave a straightforward question for developers: how much room should a release schedule leave for review?