Former Square Enix Executive Criticizes Steam Approval Delays as Valve Promises to Scale Reviews

Steam's game approval process is under renewed scrutiny after Valve acknowledged that some submissions are currently taking as long as 12 business days to move through review. The delay matters most to small developers working around tightly planned launch windows, marketing beats, demos, and festival deadlines. It also arrives as the PC storefront continues to deal with an enormous volume of releases, including games that use generative AI, low-effort imitators, and projects that may require additional checks before they can go live.

Valve has said it is behind on approvals and has been spending recent weeks expanding its process to better match the increased number of games being submitted. The company pointed to repeat reviews as a major reason for the present slowdown, an outcome it described as undesirable for both developers and its own review teams.

Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix executive, responded sharply to the situation, arguing that Valve's financial success means it should be able to put substantially more money and staff into moderation, review tooling, and operational support. His comments have sparked a wider conversation about what creators should reasonably expect from the dominant PC games marketplace--and whether faster approvals can be achieved without weakening safeguards.

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Valve says re-reviews are slowing Steam submissions

Steam is not simply a self-publishing button. Developers submit builds and store materials, and games go through Valve's processes before release. In principle, review is there to ensure that a product functions appropriately on the platform and complies with its rules. A backlog becomes especially frustrating when a team has completed its work but cannot set a release date with confidence until approval is finished.

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Valve's current estimate of up to 12 business days means a potential wait approaching two and a half calendar weeks, depending on when a game enters the queue and whether it needs follow-up. For larger publishers, that may be inconvenient but manageable. For a small studio coordinating press coverage, creator campaigns, contractor availability, or a limited cash runway, uncertainty can have more serious consequences.

The company identified re-review work as a key pressure point. That can occur when a submission needs changes or clarifications before it meets the requirements for launch. Every project that returns to the process may consume more review capacity, and a growing flow of submissions can turn those additional checks into a bottleneck.

Valve has not offered a specific date for when waits will return to a shorter timetable, nor has it detailed exactly how many additional people or systems are being brought into the process. Its public position is that it is actively trying to scale review operations in response to the spike in submissions.

Navok says Valve has the resources to do more

Navok's central argument is not merely that there are more AI-made or AI-assisted games arriving on Steam. He contends that volume has exposed a longstanding investment problem. In his view, Valve should use more of the revenue it earns from Steam to build robust systems and hire enough people to review content at scale.

He compared Steam's business to Roblox, asserting that Steam generates roughly three times Roblox's revenue while Roblox handles vastly more daily releases through automated systems. Navok's broader point was that a large digital platform can invest in technology and personnel to process a major amount of content more quickly than Steam currently does.

He was also highly critical of Valve's priorities, joking about the money co-founder Gabe Newell has reportedly spent on yachts and framing that as a symbol of a company that could readily afford to expand its review operation. The joke was pointed, but Navok's practical recommendation was more straightforward: build better tools and add human reviewers rather than allowing developers to face lengthy delays.

Navok's position is that Steam should invest in "proper tooling and humans" to conduct reviews at scale.

He also criticized Steam's standard 30% revenue share, arguing that the company has a responsibility to reinvest in the systems developers depend on. Steam's revenue cut has been debated for years, although Valve applies lower rates to revenue above certain sales thresholds. Regardless of the precise percentage a particular game pays, Navok's complaint centers on service: creators giving a storefront a share of their sales expect predictable publishing infrastructure in return.

Roblox is a complicated comparison

The Roblox comparison illustrates the appeal of rapid, automated review, but it is not a clean one-to-one model for Steam. Roblox is a platform where creators make and distribute experiences within Roblox's own ecosystem. That gives the company a different degree of control over its tools, assets, formats, and technical environment than Valve has over the wide variety of independently built PC games submitted to Steam.

Steam must deal with games made in countless engines, using different middleware, online services, storefront assets, business models, and content approaches. A submission might be a small single-player puzzle game, a complex multiplayer service, a visual novel, a virtual reality release, an Early Access project, or software with external account systems. The variety adds challenges that do not necessarily exist in the same form within a more tightly controlled creation platform.

Automation can also create its own risks. Systems that rapidly flag, rank, or approve material can be useful for triage, but they can be manipulated when bad actors learn what the system looks for. A review pipeline built primarily for speed may allow more questionable material through, potentially placing even more burden on developers and players trying to distinguish legitimate games from copycats, scams, or poorly made releases.

Roblox itself has faced persistent moderation criticism, particularly around the challenge of overseeing an immense volume of user-generated content. Fast publishing is not the same thing as effective oversight. That does not invalidate Navok's call for greater investment, but it does show why a demand for instant approvals is not necessarily a complete solution.

The AI issue is making an existing problem harder

Generative AI has become part of this debate because it can reduce the time and expertise required to produce store art, text, code, and even whole game concepts. That can increase the number of projects entering storefront pipelines, including direct imitations designed to benefit from the visibility of more original work.

For developers, the concern is not abstract. A small team may spend years establishing a recognizable game concept, only to see similarly named or visually familiar projects appear around its announcement or launch. Even when those games do not break a specific rule, their presence can confuse customers and dilute attention at the exact moment an independent release needs it most.

Still, Steam's submission volume was rising before the current generative-AI boom. The PC market has become more accessible to new developers, game engines and asset stores have lowered production barriers, and Steam remains the most important commercial destination for many premium PC releases. AI may intensify the strain, but it is not the only reason Valve's review process is under pressure.

That distinction matters because it affects the remedy. If the issue were only a temporary wave of AI-generated projects, Valve might be able to wait for the surge to settle or target a narrow set of policies. If it is instead a structural challenge caused by the scale and diversity of Steam's marketplace, the answer likely requires ongoing spending on staff, internal tools, clearer submission guidance, and possibly more effective ways to identify repeat offenders before they consume review time.

Speed, quality, and developer confidence

The difficult balance for Valve is that developers want two things that can pull in opposite directions: faster decisions and meaningful oversight. A review system that clears everything almost immediately would reduce launch uncertainty, but it could also make Steam's discovery and trust problems worse if it failed to catch obvious issues. A highly cautious process may improve scrutiny, but it becomes damaging when legitimate games wait too long without clear visibility into their status.

A stronger system would not necessarily mean choosing one side. Better automation could handle routine checks, identify obvious metadata problems, and prioritize urgent cases. Human reviewers could then spend more time on edge cases, suspicious submissions, policy questions, and games requiring deeper examination. Developers would also benefit from clearer explanations when a submission needs changes, reducing the chance of repeated delays caused by guesswork.

Valve's statement that it is scaling the process suggests it recognizes the pressure. The remaining question is whether those changes will meaningfully reduce waits while preserving the level of review Steam needs. Navok's criticism has given voice to a frustration many creators share, even if his Roblox comparison is imperfect and his rhetoric is deliberately provocative.

For now, developers preparing a Steam launch have a practical reason to build additional time into their schedules. A storefront approval may take longer than expected, especially if a game is sent back for another pass. And as submissions continue to climb, Valve's ability to make the process faster, clearer, and more resilient will be increasingly important to the health of the PC games market.