“Spent everything on Gabe's navy”: Former Square Enix manager criticized Steam, claiming the service is “derelict in its duty”

Recently, Steam has once again come under criticism. This time, a former director of business development at Square Enix decided to speak out on social media.

Jacob Navok drew attention to an issue that developers have been actively complaining about lately — Steam moderators take a long time to review games before publication (Valve has already acknowledged this problem).

The former Square Enix manager noted that Steam currently “generates 3 times more revenue than Roblox,” while Roblox sees “up to 1,000 times more” new games released daily than Steam.

At the same time, releasing a project on Roblox takes literally “seconds” — made possible by an automated review system. On Steam, however, this process can take weeks:

Jacob Navok believes the problem is not artificial intelligence (which has accelerated game development, increasing the volume of submissions), but Valve's approach to organizing moderation:

Navok noted that Valve “takes 30% of revenue from developers, but hasn't invested a penny into the systems needed to handle content review.” Such behavior by the company, in his opinion, is “absolutely shameful.”

One of the discussion participants expressed the opinion that Valve “spent all the money on yachts” and that the company employs “the biggest bloodsuckers in the gaming industry.” Navok replied briefly: “All for Gabe's navy.”

Valve previously spoke about changing its approach to reviewing Steam builds. The company is trying to adapt to the heavy influx of new projects.