One developer has been waiting for weeks on approval for a game it planned to release today.One developer has been waiting for weeks on approval for a game it planned to release today.Nov 3, 2026, 6:14 PM UTCA screenshot from Food Devils, which is missing its planned launch today.Image: Studio DaimonMany indie game developers have recently posted on social media about unexpectedly long approval wait times for their game submissions on Steam, with some of the approvals causing developers to miss their planned launch dates.For example, Studio Daimon, the team behind an upcoming title called Food Devils, had planned to launch the game in early access today after submitting its build on October 12th. But the game is “still awaiting approval,” according to a post from game director Alfred Kamon. “Even now, we don’t know when Steam will give us the final OK to finally release our game. We sent another ticket last week saying that the situation was urgent and that we might miss our release date because of this, but it also got ignored.”In October, publisher 2 Left Thumbs said it missed its planned launch of Wheel Make It “by nearly two weeks” due to the long wait for build reviews. You can read some details about the studio’s setbacks, including failing a review for a “one single option in the menu” not being accessible with a controller, in a Steam post. There are lots of other recent posts about review build waits as well.Valve says on a Steam developer website that a review of a game’s store presence “typically takes 3-5 business days to complete,” though the company suggests submitting a page for review “at least 7 business days before you want it live to account for potential changes you’ll need to make.” However, as of late, Steam has seemingly been grappling with a sharp increase in games; 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.Kamon and 2 Left Thumbs suspect the longer waits are due to “slop” slowing down the process. “We can only assume it’s because Steam’s review queue is clogged up by AI slop, but the whole process is now taking several weeks for some developers,” said Kamon.Valve didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.Itch.io has also been dealing with a rise in games, with the platform saying last weekend that “The number of game pages being created per-day has doubled in the past 2 months.” Last night, the platform said it “Just deleted a couple terabytes of ai slop 😌”Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jay PetersThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Indie games are missing launch dates because Steam is backed up
