Steam Approval Backlog Is Causing Indie Developers to Miss Launch Dates

Indie game developers are missing their planned launch dates after running into unexpectedly long approval wait times on Steam, with some submissions sitting in review for several weeks.

Studio Daimon, the team behind an upcoming title called Food Devils, submitted its build on October 12, 2026, with plans to launch the game in early access shortly after. As of the developers’ most recent update, the game was “still awaiting approval.” Game director Alfred Kamon said the studio sent a follow-up ticket flagging the urgency of the situation, but it “also got ignored.”

Valve states on its Steam developer website that a store page review “typically takes 3-5 business days to complete,” recommending developers submit at least seven business days before their target launch date. In practice, some developers are now reporting waits of several weeks.

The delays appear connected to a sharp rise in game submissions. October’s Steam Next Fest featured 7,240 games — a 65.2 percent increase over June’s Steam Next Fest, according to How to Market a Game. A separate finding from a Reddit user noted that 49.9 percent of all games released since Valve began requiring AI disclosure labels in 2024 carry such a label, suggesting a significant volume of AI-generated content entering the platform.

Kamon and developer 2 Left Thumbs both suspect the review queue is being slowed by AI-generated submissions. “We can only assume it’s because Steam’s review queue is clogged up by AI slop,” Kamon said. Valve did not respond to a request for comment.

The issue extends beyond Steam. Itch.io reported last weekend that the number of game pages being created per day had doubled over the prior two months. The platform subsequently announced it had deleted “a couple terabytes of ai slop.” The parallel surge across platforms suggests the backlog problem may grow more acute for legitimate indie developers if submission volumes continue to rise.