Getting a game onto Steam is taking longer than many developers would like, and Valve has acknowledged the strain. The company says its approval process is currently running behind, with reviews taking as long as 12 business days in some cases. It attributes much of that delay to games needing to be reviewed again—a costly loop for both the platform and the teams waiting for a release window.
That admission has reignited an argument about what the world’s biggest PC games storefront owes the developers who depend on it. Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix executive, has forcefully argued that Valve should put substantially more money, staff and technical infrastructure into handling the growing submission queue. His criticism is blunt: Steam collects a platform fee from developers, so it should be prepared to operate a review system at the scale modern publishing demands.
Valve, for its part, says it has been working over recent weeks to scale its process in response to the rise in submitted games. That is an important detail. The current delay is not presented as a new permanent rule or a formal change to Steam’s publishing requirements. It is a backlog problem, and Valve says it is trying to increase capacity.
Why a 12-business-day review window matters
For a large publisher, a delay can be inconvenient. For a small team, it can disrupt a carefully planned launch. Developers often coordinate a release around marketing beats, creator coverage, community events, partner agreements and the availability of the people who will support the game after launch. A review that takes longer than expected can complicate that schedule, particularly if the submission has to be revised and reviewed again.
The issue is not simply that games are waiting in a line. Valve specifically points to re-reviews as a major cause of the slowdown. In plain terms, that means a title already examined by the platform must go back through part of the process. Re-reviewing may be necessary when a build changes, when a previously identified issue needs checking, or when information associated with the release requires another look. Whatever the individual reason, each repeat pass consumes reviewer time that cannot be spent on the next game in the queue.
For players, a slower approval process may sound like a business-side inconvenience. But storefront review is one of the places where a platform tries to make sure its catalogue is not overwhelmed by misleading, abusive or low-effort releases. The practical challenge is therefore two-sided: developers need predictability and speed, while customers and legitimate studios need a store that does not reward bad actors for flooding it with junk.
Navok’s case: invest in people and tools
Navok compared Steam’s pace with Roblox, arguing that Roblox handles far more releases through automated systems while Steam approvals can take weeks. He also framed Valve’s resources as central to the debate, contending that a company with Steam’s revenue should be able to invest more aggressively in review operations.
His broader prescription is more serious than the social-media barbs aimed at Valve co-founder Gabe Newell’s yacht spending: build better tooling and employ enough people to review games at scale. That position separates two related problems that are easy to blur together. One is volume—the raw number of games entering the system. The other is review capacity—the staffing, workflow and software available to process that volume without sacrificing scrutiny.
Related coverage includes Former Square Enix Executive Criticizes Steam Approval Delays as Valve Promises to Scale Reviews.
Navok rejects the idea that generative-AI games alone explain Steam’s predicament. There is merit in seeing the situation as an accumulated capacity issue. The number of games arriving on Steam had already been rising before AI-assisted production and so-called “vibe coding” added more ways for creators to rapidly produce and submit projects.
Generative AI refers here to systems that can produce material such as text, art, audio or code from prompts or other inputs. Vibe coding is an informal term for using AI coding assistance to build software through high-level prompts and iterative instructions rather than writing every part manually. Neither term automatically describes a bad game. The concern is that tools lowering the cost and time needed to create a submission can also lower the barrier for copycats, deceptive products and projects made with little care.
That matters because an open PC storefront is not merely sorting finished games by genre. It must deal with a changing set of builds, developer accounts, store pages, claims about content, and potential efforts to evade its rules. A system built for a smaller submission flow can become strained even if every individual reviewer is working effectively.
Why Roblox is not a simple blueprint
The Roblox comparison helps illustrate the appeal of automation, but it does not establish that Steam can—or should—approve games in seconds. Roblox projects are created within Roblox’s own platform. That gives the company a more standardized environment for monitoring experiences and assets. Steam operates as a storefront for games made with many different tools and technologies, from solo projects to complex commercial releases.
Standardization is the crucial difference. Automated review works best when the system can inspect structured, familiar material and apply rules consistently. An open store that receives highly varied game builds faces a broader set of technical and policy questions. That does not mean automation is useless; it means automation is likely to be one layer of a larger process rather than a magic switch that removes human review.
Roblox also has moderation problems of its own. Fast, automated clearance can create opportunities for abuse if people learn which signals the system checks and how to avoid triggering them. In content moderation, this is an ongoing adversarial problem: a platform establishes a safeguard, bad actors study it, and the safeguard needs to evolve. A process optimized only for speed may become easier to game.
Steam’s challenge is especially sensitive because the complaint from developers is not just about waiting. Small teams can face alleged copycats before their own games are even released. A storefront that accelerates approvals without effective checks could make discovery and trust worse, not better. An unchecked surge of lookalike projects may bury original work in search results, confuse consumers and create more work later through complaints, takedowns and enforcement actions.
Scaling does not have to mean replacing reviewers
Valve says it is scaling its process to meet the submission spike, but it has not detailed the precise mix of changes involved. The stated goal leaves room for several approaches: additional human review capacity, workflow improvements, better systems for routing submissions, or tools that identify straightforward issues before a reviewer spends time on them.
That distinction matters. “Automation” is often treated as synonymous with “no humans involved,” but it can also mean giving human reviewers more useful information and allowing them to concentrate on difficult cases. In a review queue, tooling could theoretically help flag duplicate or incomplete submissions, organize cases that need another look, or reduce repetitive administrative tasks. The evidence available here does not establish which measures Valve is using, so it would be premature to claim a particular solution is on the way.
The sensible measure of success is not approvals in seconds. It is whether legitimate developers can rely on a clear, timely process while the store retains meaningful safeguards against abuse. A shorter queue is useful; a shorter queue that creates an explosion of deceptive releases is not.
There is a related tension in PC publishing: Steam’s openness is part of what makes it valuable to small teams, but that openness creates pressure when submissions rise sharply. A restrictive approach can shut out legitimate newcomers. A permissive approach can leave developers fighting for visibility among clones and low-effort releases. Review systems sit directly in the middle of that trade-off.
What developers should take from Valve’s update
The immediate takeaway is procedural rather than dramatic. Teams planning a Steam release should account for the possibility that approval may take up to 12 business days while the backlog persists, and should recognize that re-review can extend the process further. Valve has acknowledged the delay and says it is acting to expand capacity, but it has not provided a date when the queue will return to a shorter turnaround.
For players, the episode is a reminder that storefront quality is not maintained by a single button labelled “AI moderation.” It depends on rules, enforcement, human judgment and systems capable of adapting when submission patterns change. The current dispute is really about how much Valve should spend to make that system more reliable—and how transparent it should be when the system falls behind.
Navok’s criticism has focused attention on a legitimate pressure point: developers paying to access a major marketplace expect its basic publishing machinery to function at scale. Valve’s response, meanwhile, suggests it recognizes that the present pace is insufficient. The company’s next test is execution. Scaling the queue without turning Steam into a faster conveyor belt for copycats and slop will be far harder than simply making the approval timer move faster.
For more on the pressures facing game studios and the industry around them, see our report on a documentary examining BioWare’s final years.
