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Steam game submissions surge in the AI era, with Valve reviews now taking up to 12 business days
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In the context of the AI era, Valve is adjusting Steam's pre-launch review process for games to cope with a review backlog caused by a sharp increase in store page and game build submissions. On November 3 local time, Valve announced the relevant adjustments in a Steamworks developer notice. The company said that the number of review submissions has increased significantly over the past few months.
Valve said that game build reviews currently usually take 3 to 5 business days, but review progress has recently been delayed and may take up to 12 business days. A large part of the review delay is because some games need to be reviewed repeatedly. This update mainly targets the pre-release checklist for developers, with the aim of helping more games pass review on the first attempt and reducing repeated reviews caused by basic functionality issues.
Under the new requirements, before submitting a game for review, developers must launch the game through the Steam client and run it for at least 5 minutes. Valve said that sometimes the game builds sent to the review team have never even been launched through Steam. Even if everything works when developers run the game executable directly, necessary configuration that affects players installing and launching the game through Steam may still be missing.
The new checklist also requires developers to confirm that game achievements are ready and to check common redistributables required by the game, such as DirectX or Visual C++ runtimes, to ensure Steam can install them as needed. Valve will also dynamically display checklist items based on the features listed on the game's store page. For example, if a developer claims multi-language support, they need to confirm that the corresponding language content is included in the game build; if multiplayer features require special accounts to access, relevant credentials should also be provided to reviewers.
Valve said these adjustments have been rolled out gradually over the past few weeks, and it will continue to improve the build review process and refine documentation related to the developer release checklist. The company recommends that developers, before submitting for review, confirm that the store page description and assets are complete and clear, that the actual game content matches what the page promises, and that sensitive content requiring disclosure has been accurately described in the relevant questionnaire.
According to The Verge, some indie game developers had previously publicly reported that Steam review waiting times were too long, and some games even missed their scheduled release dates as a result. The indie game Food Devils had still not passed review on the day it planned to launch Early Access; publisher 2 Left Thumbs' game Wheel Make It also ultimately launched nearly two weeks later than planned due to review delays. Whether Valve's adjustments this time can alleviate the review backlog remains to be seen.
