Valve’s approval process has always taken a bit of time, but it’s taking much longer lately because of the staggering volume of games hoping to launch on the platform — an issue that’s only grown with the advent of generative AI.
As of November 2026, approximately 24,299 games have been released on Steam this year alone, compared to 10 years ago when around 4,500 games launched across the entire year of 2016.
Unless you’re a major publisher with a proven track record, all games must undergo Valve’s testing process to make sure they’re fit for Steam and don’t riddle players’ computers with malware. But many games are now missing their release dates because of this backlog.
The issue has gotten so bad that Valve put out an official statement acknowledging the issue. “We've seen a significant increase in submissions for store page and build review in recent months, and have spent the last several weeks working to scale our process to match it,” Valve said.
“Though we still have a ways to go, we want to share the initial improvements that have shipped in the past weeks. The changes are designed to help more developers pass build review the first time, and cut down on re-reviews for basic functional issues.”
Usually it takes Valve 3-5 business days to review a game, but the average is now 12 business days. Some of the delay is due to developers not being ready, games being rejected or having to be retested. Valve left a series of tips for developers to pass approvals the first time.
"We've heard from a lot of developers and know how stressful it's been having to wait for review build updates longer than expected," Valve said. "More improvements are coming to the build review process, but these initial changes are a great starting point."
Valve didn’t address the AI issue in the post, but the issue has grown to the point where Valve employees are being asked how Steam plans to address the issue. Valve’s Steam Business Team took to the stage at the recent Steam Indie Connect event in Korea and took questions from an audience of game developers. During the chat, the issue of Steam being flooded with AI slop and knockoff AI clones came up, and Valve said it was still trying to figure out how to navigate this new world.
At the time, Valve said there are no plans to outright ban AI games from Steam, and suggested developers do more to stand out so their games can’t be easily cloned.
Steam currently requires developers to disclose AI usage, giving customers the option to vote with their wallets. Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney doesn’t like this at all, calling it a “political message.” Indie storefront Itch recently deleted what it called “terabytes of AI slop” from its store, which made it difficult for users to find the things they were looking for.