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Steam is a platform where practically anyone can take a game they have created and upload it for the whole world to see – which is great, right?
Well, it is until you have AI flooding Steam with more games than the approval team can handle, leading to delays in the actual human-coded games that deserve the attention and approval before the AI slop even gets thought about. Sadly, this hasn't been the case, and while it hasn't been confirmed that AI is responsible for these approval delays, it seems pretty likely.
Multiple developers have come out and made their grievances known regarding the lack of approval on each of their games, with certain applicants, namely the developers of Food Devils and Cubic Earth, having been waiting for approval for around 20 days; a hefty amount more than Steam's usual 5-7 day limit, and with the latter of the two not even being able to contact Valve at all (thanks, PC Gamer).
Valve claims the long delays are because they have to re-review games when developers don't submit them in working condition. Due to this, they released a Steamworks update, adding a checklist of points that need to be fulfilled before submitting a game to Steam, such as running your game for 5 minutes on Steam, and making sure all images are on the store page and that the game has every function it needs on the day of release – pretty standard stuff, which aims to weed out games that simply don't work yet and that can be updated by the developer and reviewed at a later date.
Now, I imagine we are all thinking the same thing when it comes to issues like this, and I think we're also pointing the finger at one fairly obvious and equally unwelcome guest that has entered (or plagued) the gaming industry in a big way this year.
"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," says Alfred Kamon, the Game Director of Food Devils. "Even now, we don't know when Steam will give us the final OK to finally release our game. For those who were looking forward to playing Food Devils, I'm sorry... and I share your pain..."
Now, despite Valve not making a statement on AI in regard to this, its reasoning for why the delays are happening could well still be involved, as all of the things that seem very obvious to us in regard to optimising your game to work on Steam, and making sure it can run at all on Steam, may not be as obvious for someone who is vibe "coding", as they may not have any knowledge of how any of these systems work.
This can, and will, lead to Valve having to keep re-reviewing games that are sent in completely unplayable on the Steam platform, and while not confirmed, it seems like at least some of the issues, especially with the recent Next Fest, are evidence enough of the rise of AI use and how prevalent it is.
I truly hope Valve pinpoints what is responsible for this setback, and I hope they take a harsher stance on how AI is used on their platform, no matter how much they don't want to "gatekeep" tools.