Steam Next Fest hits 8,000+ demos as AI flood stretches review times to 12 days

draginol · x · 2026-11-05

Stardock CEO (draginol) publishes an analysis of how the AI content flood is reshaping the game industry:

Steam Next Fest featured over 8,000 demos at once; a new Steam game now takes 12 days on average to get its first review
Citing GitHub blog data, he argues a threshold was crossed around December 2025 when AI became better than most software developers — GitHub saw an explosion of new repos since there's no barrier to entry, and Steam is next
Unless Valve gates "low-effort AI slop" (a heavy burden to define and enforce), an explosion of new titles is inevitable
He proposes a "three numbers" framework: total titles released, the attention the market can realistically allocate, and the percentile of attention a game needs to succeed — explaining why AAA studios are already struggling
Core thesis: attention is the new currency, and AI is accelerating the death spiral of many game studios

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