"Steam is not fulfilling its duties": Former Square Enix executive criticized Valve for the lengthy game review process
Recently, developers have been complaining that Steam moderators are taking longer to review games before publication. The store itself has officially acknowledged the problem. This situation has greatly disappointed former Director of Business Development at Square Enix, Jacob Navok.
On his X account, Navok accused Valve of being stingy. In his view, Steam's issues are not due to the influx of AI games but because of the company's management's unwillingness to invest in upgrading the review system.
As a counterexample, Navok cited Roblox. According to the manager, Roblox releases a thousand times more games daily than Steam, but thanks to process automation, the review takes mere seconds.
"Valve takes 30% from developers but doesn't spend a cent on the systems necessary for content review. It's simply a disgrace," Navok wrote.
Continuing the discussion, Navok presented some rather strange data. He indicated that Valve earns $20 billion annually and employs only five Steam moderators. As the manager joked, Valve's head, Gabe Newell, spends all the money on buying yachts and thus cannot afford to hire even one more moderator.
It's unclear where Navok obtained these figures. Perhaps he drew the revenue information from a recent report by Alinea Analytics, which forecasted that by the end of 2026, the total gross revenue of all games on Steam would exceed $20 billion. But it is important to understand that game revenue on Steam does not equal Steam's own revenue.
Recall that Valve announced changes to the game review process on Steam with the goal of speeding it up. Specifically, it requires developers to play the games they've created before releasing them in the store—this way, they can ensure there are no launch errors.