Indie dev says Steam helped fix their broken game before Next Fest instead of rejecting it

The Steam Next Fest is one of Valve’s biggest events for upcoming PC games, giving developers a chance to showcase their projects and let players try free demos before launch. For many indie developers, appearing in Next Fest can lead to more visibility, player feedback, and wishlist growth. And for one small indie team, Steam Support may have helped them avoid missing out on the event entirely.

The developer behind the multiplayer social-deduction game Red Flag shared their experience on the IndieDev subreddit, describing how Valve helped resolve a build issue shortly before the Next Fest deadline. According to the post, the team uploaded their demo on the morning of the deadline without realizing that Steam build reviews can take 5 to 7 days. They feared that if the build was not approved in time, Red Flag would be disqualified from Next Fest with no second chance to participate.

The situation became more stressful because the upload happened on a weekend, when Steam Partner Support is not normally available. The developer said they sent an urgent message to regular Steam Support, and surprisingly, they received a response within a few hours saying that their request had been forwarded for urgent review. Later that day, the build was approved, but Valve noted that the reviewer could not initially launch the game because of a problem with the C++ redistributable setup, as the team had used local DLLs instead of Steam’s common redistributable system.

However, what surprised the team was that Valve did not simply reject the build and send it back for correction. Instead, Steam Support adjusted the configuration, fixed the dependency issue, and approved the build, allowing Red Flag to participate in Next Fest.

The dev said that after their first day in Next Fest, the game’s wishlists nearly doubled, and they were able to meet players in their online lobby. In the same Reddit thread, several other developers shared similar experiences, saying that Valve had also helped them resolve technical or submission issues in the past. This suggests that Steam’s support team is often willing to help developers fix problems when possible, rather than immediately rejecting builds over correctable issues.