More indie developers say they’ve been forced to delay the impending release of their games as a result of Steam’s growing approvals backlog – a relatively recent problem that’s believed to stem from an influx of AI slop on the platform.

Earlier this month, developers began complaining about delays to Valve’s approval process, which was extending the time it took to get their games published on Steam. Valve responded, explaining approval times could now take up to 12 days, due to the number of submissions it was having to re-review. One week on, the situation doesn’t seem to have improved.

New turn-based tower defence game Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defense Business, co-developed by acclaimed indie designer Rami Ismail and Aesthetician Labs, was previously set for release on 10th November. Unfortunately, the game has now been delayed while the wait continues for Valve to review the latest build.

“We’re still waiting for Steam to give us the final greenlight and finish their build review process,” publisher Mystic Forge wrote on the Steam forums. “We have been stuck waiting for it for a few weeks now and unfortunately we just don’t know when they will get around to reviewing it at this point.”

Speaking to Eurogamer, Ismail added that Australia Did It has been in Steam’s approval queue for much longer than he’s used to: “We’ve been in the queue since 20th October, failed over a minor controller input issue on 5th November (which we resolved the same day), and we’ve been waiting again since with no meaningful response from Valve despite follow-ups.”

“I’m used to hold-and-wait patterns on console,” Ismail continued, “but Steam has historically been much more snappy – 10-14 days pre-launch was usually enough to fail twice and still ship on time,” he added.

Amazing Slot Survivor (A.S.S.), the debut title from TwoMenGames, is facing similar issues, and has had to retract its release date announcement after being stuck in Steam’s approval queue. Amazing Slot Survivor, which adds a slot machine spin to the bullet heaven auto-shooting genre, was initially set for release on 13th November.

“Steam’s review process for the release is taking longer than we expected,” TwoMenGames wrote in a message on Steam. “We know many of you have been counting on the schedule we announced earlier, and we are very sorry to bring you this [postponement] news instead of the good news you were hoping for.” Amazing Slot Survivor’s demo, which was previously set to disappear with the game’s full release, has returned to Steam until the developer announces a new launch date.

These are far from the only examples, and a cursory look on social media reveals many more indie games are affected by the problem, including the likes of Bottled by Bears, and Food Devils.

Valve recently attempted to address the delays its facing by introducing stricter submission guidelines designed to stop the lowest-effort games, such as those vibe-coded entirely with gen-AI, from joining its approval queue. However, Ismail doesn’t think that’s good enough.

“I am concerned that Valve trying to avoid taking a political position on AI is forcing them into choices that will inevitably be worse for developers,” he told Eurogamer. “If sloppers can submit several game clones a day through automated systems, the only way for Valve to stem the tide of games damaging genuine developers’ work is to put constraints on game distribution, increase fees, or make the process more complicated.

“In the ‘open market’ Valve seems to so adore, they’re going to be the ones carrying the costs for moderation, so I don’t think they’ll like the open market on this – but there’s no outcome of this that allows Valve neutrality on AI and not do things that will ultimately make life worse for genuine developers,” he added.