Reported by The Verge AI
One developer has been waiting for weeks on approval for a game it planned to release today.
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More from the original report
Many 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…