Independent publisher 2 Left Thumbs said on 2 November that a flood of AI-generated games overwhelmed Steam's review queue and hurt the launch of Wheel Make It. This is the publisher's claim — a STATEMENT, not a fact confirmed by Valve.
Developed by tlproductions, Wheel Make It is a physics co-op game in which two players share control of a single wheelchair. It launched on 1 November, almost three weeks after its planned 12 October release date.
According to the publisher, the game had more than 11,000 wishlists before launch, but its early peak was just 15 concurrent players, in a SteamDB chart shared by 2 Left Thumbs itself. Concurrent players are not the same as copies sold, and the chart captures the opening hours, not the game's lifetime performance.
The timeline reported by the publisher includes two review rejections: first, reviewers reportedly could not access local co-op — an issue the publisher says was solved by sharing a keyboard; then, on 21 October, another rejection because the resolution setting could not be accessed with a controller. Approval reportedly arrived on 23 October, but the team says it could not set a replacement date on the store page, which stayed marked as coming soon until release.
The team therefore delayed the already approved game until 1 November to rebuild some launch momentum. Valve, for its part, has acknowledged Steam's discovery problem, but its public response has focused on improving recommendations, not on banning AI tools.
On 27 October, at Steam Indie Connect, Steam business team member Tom Giardino said Valve does not want to be a gatekeeper telling developers which tools they should or should not use. In other words, Valve's public comments do not confirm that AI submissions caused the delay, or that the delay alone caused the soft opening.
On Steam, Wheel Make It costs $4.99, with a 10% launch discount to $4.49 in an introductory offer ending 15 November. There is also a free public demo, and the game offers a single-player mode — in which the player controls both wheels — time leaderboards and unlockable skins, with support for 14 languages, including Brazilian Portuguese.
Sources: Power Up Gaming; COGconnected; official Wheel Make It Steam page.
Image credit: official Wheel Make It artwork, shown on the game's Steam page (Valve / tlproductions / 2 Left Thumbs).
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts on X and internet sources. Check the original sources for full details.
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