Valve says Steam's discovery needs work, not restrictions on AI tools
Valve is working on how Steam surfaces games, including the low-quality titles players encounter during Next Fest, but does not want to restrict developers' choice of tools. Steam Business Team members Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson outlined that position during an October 27 Q&A at Steam Indie Connect in South Korea.
Daniel Pereira
Next Fest's opening days put exposure before personalization
A developer who reported disappointing results from the latest Next Fest asked about complaints that poor-quality games were crowding the event. Wilkinson said recommendations are nearly random during the first two days, then become personalized to players' likely interests. He suggested that much of the coverage criticizing the selection reflected that opening period.
According to Inven Global's account of the session, the initial randomness is meant to distribute exposure fairly and prevent developers from securing an immediate advantage by entering early. Wilkinson acknowledged the downside: "We recognize that the trade-off is some low-quality games get exposed," he said, adding that "a significant number of people are thinking about how to solve this problem."
The festival has also become far more crowded. Giardino recalled encouraging developers to participate three years ago, when he said there were only 50 or 100 games, and contrasted that with today's thousands of entries.
A separate count published October 21, 2026, by How To Market A Game, using GameDiscoverCo figures, put participation in the October festival at 7,240 games. That was up 65.2% from June 2026's 4,382 entries and roughly eight times the 887 recorded in June 2023. The blog explained that reports of around 8,000 games used an earlier press-preview count; withdrawals brought the live festival page's total down to 7,240.
Valve favors store improvements over filtering developers
Giardino said developers should decide for themselves whether to use AI. "We don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use," he said, according to Inven Global's transcript. Valve announced no AI filter at the session.
He placed the requests in a longer history of objections to Steam's expanding catalog. Around 14 years ago, the arrival of Steam Greenlight prompted requests to hide games admitted through that system. Steam Direct, the current self-publishing system, later brought similar demands for a checkbox to exclude its titles. Giardino said Valve responded by improving how people shop rather than rejecting developers or dividing games into good and bad categories in advance.
"We don't think we're perfect and there's plenty of room for improvement," Giardino said. "Rather than limiting developer access, making Steam a smarter and more dynamic platform is the starting point of our philosophy." He said Valve has likewise maintained access to Next Fest and seasonal sales while adjusting store-page layouts and game placements.
Clone threats bring demands for money and pulled demos
Giardino said copying successful ideas was a problem before AI; the technology has accelerated the process of seeing a promising Next Fest game and producing an imitation. One developer raised a more specific concern: emails threatening studios with an AI-made clone that would launch before their game unless they paid.
Giardino said he had not previously heard of those threats. He regarded extortion primarily as a law-enforcement issue rather than a platform matter, but said Valve wanted developers to report cases so it could investigate. Steam's emphasis, he added, is less on taking copies down than on helping players discover the original.
In an October 19, 2026, report, Inven Global described demands for $200 in Steam items within 24 hours to stop a clone from being released first. Takashi Mochibe of Japan's Studio Athome disclosed receiving such a message on October 18 concerning his upcoming tactical RPG, "Dragon's Chronicles: Twin Stars of Reginleiv." Weasel Pit, which develops "Iron Pilgrim," reported a similar email on September 30, as did "Circusar" developer Psicodart Games on October 2. Inven noted suspicions that the "Iron Pilgrim" incident was staged to attract wishlists. No developer was reported to have paid.
Copycat concerns have also affected demo availability. Inven Global reported that YNOT, a two-person Korean studio, removed the public demo for its cooking-tycoon game "Spookitchen" on October 20 after learning that someone was using AI to copy it. The team described the withdrawal as "only a temporary measure, not a fundamental solution."
That report also described at least eight titles with names and themes similar to "Needle In A Haystack Simulator" appearing before its release. Its developer responded by putting "ORIGINAL" on store images. Another game, "Family Time," faced a near-identical name and store page before launch.
For developers concerned about imitation, Giardino recommended cultivating a community and continuing to develop their games. He compared that approach with Valve's preference for making a legitimate game better than a pirated version rather than relying on aggressive DRM. "Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective," he said.
Purchases and play, not wishlists, drive visibility
Wilkinson told developers that wishlist totals do not determine Steam visibility; the number of people purchasing and playing a game does. He cited games that arrived with 3 million wishlists but dropped out of the charts after delivering a poor player experience, alongside hits that had started with almost no wishlists.
Giardino recommended using wishlists to assess marketing instead. Developers could, for example, look for changes after running an advertisement or posting TikTok videos for a week. Valve also highlighted the Wishlist Data API, which accepts an App ID and date range and provides wishlist figures broken down by period, country and language.
The Personal Calendar offers another route to discovery for upcoming games. Now an official store feature after its Steam Labs experimental phase, it recommends releases that have been wishlisted by players with similar play styles. A game must have an official release date set to appear. Giardino described the calendar as virtually Steam's only area reserved exclusively for brand-new releases and said a game's exposure there does not recur once one to two weeks have elapsed after launch.
Steam's audience reaches a new high
The event's presentation materials cited a recent worldwide peak of 43.5 million concurrent Steam users, according to Inven Global. The session was co-hosted by Valve, the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee and the Korea Creative Content Agency.
Inven's October 12 report provided the underlying SteamDB figures: 43,505,724 users were online simultaneously on October 11, 2026, including about 14.46 million actively playing games. That surpassed the March 2026 record of 42,686,616 concurrent users, setting a new high roughly seven months later.
