Steam launches in numbers: the Steam Launch Bug Index (October 2026)
Of 2739 games released on Steam in September 2026, 592 had at least 10 English reviews in their first 14 days. In the median game, 6.5% of those reviews mention a bug, crash, stutter, freeze or desync; a quarter of games sit above 12.7%. 22.1% announced a patch within 24 hours and 73.3% within a week. 24.8% carried an AI Generated Content Disclosure.
Which genres get the most bug mentions in early reviews?
Median share of first-14-day English reviews mentioning a bug, by Steam genre tag (a game counts in every genre it lists; genres with fewer than 8 games are omitted).
| Genre | n | Median bug rate | Q1–Q3 | Median negative | Patch ≤ 24 h | Patch ≤ 7 d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simulation | 239 | 8.2% | 3.7%–15% | 16.3% | 31% | 84.9% |
| Racing | 15 | 7.7% | 3.4%–14% | 14.1% | 20% | 66.7% |
| Action | 206 | 7.3% | 2.3%–13.7% | 11.5% | 20.4% | 69.9% |
| Sports | 22 | 7.2% | 3.2%–13% | 5.7% | 31.8% | 77.3% |
| RPG | 134 | 7.1% | 2.3%–14.4% | 15.7% | 20.9% | 80.6% |
| Free To Play | 55 | 6.7% | 0%–11.8% | 16.7% | 9.1% | 56.4% |
| Adventure | 214 | 6.5% | 1.8%–13.6% | 10.7% | 23.4% | 72.4% |
| Strategy | 148 | 6.3% | 1.8%–13% | 13.4% | 24.3% | 80.4% |
| Indie | 417 | 6.2% | 0.8%–12.2% | 10.3% | 22.5% | 74.6% |
| Casual | 245 | 5.3% | 0%–11.1% | 10% | 23.7% | 70.2% |
| Massively Multiplayer | 19 | 5% | 1.9%–12.5% | 26.4% | 21.1% | 63.2% |
Turn your genre into testing hours with the QA hours calculator.
Do bigger launches get more or fewer bug mentions?
Size is a proxy for studio size: total Steam reviews at the time of the scrape (27 October 2026). Small is roughly a solo or micro-team launch, large is an AA-sized audience.
| Size | Reviews | n | Median bug rate | Q1–Q3 | Median negative | Patch ≤ 24 h | Patch ≤ 7 d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 10–99 reviews | 436 | 6.5% | 0%–12.5% | 11.1% | 19.3% | 69.5% |
| Mid | 100–999 reviews | 127 | 6.7% | 3%–13.6% | 12.3% | 32.3% | 85% |
| Large | 1000–∞ reviews | 29 | 5% | 2.8%–13.8% | 18.7% | 20.7% | 79.3% |
AI disclosure vs the rest: is there a difference?
Since January 2024 Steam asks developers to disclose AI-generated content; the store page then shows an “AI Generated Content Disclosure” section. We flag a game when that section is present. We measure, we do not judge: a disclosure says a tool was used, not how.
| Group | n | Median bug rate | Q1–Q3 | Median negative | Patch ≤ 24 h | Patch ≤ 7 d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI disclosure present | 147 | 8% | 0%–12.9% | 19.4% | 21.1% | 82.3% |
| No disclosure | 445 | 6.1% | 1.7%–12.6% | 9.4% | 22.5% | 70.3% |
How many launches patch in the first day?
A game counts as patched when its first Steam community announcement after the release date mentions a patch, hotfix, fix or update. Across all 592 games: 22.1% within 24 hours, 73.3% within 7 days. The full story, including how long the first patch takes by size and genre, is in Day-one patch: what the data says; the pre-release checklist is the patch day QA checklist.
Most and fewest bug mentions (September 2026, games with 200+ reviews)
Only games with at least 200 total reviews are named; smaller games are in the CSV without name or appid. A high rate means players talked about bugs, which is not the same as a bad game: early patches often follow.
Most bug mentions
| Game | Release | Bug rate | Negative | Reviews in window | AI disclosure | First patch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police Chief Simulator | 2026-09-17 | 42% | 32% | 300 | no | 17 h |
| Wild West Pioneers | 2026-09-25 | 35.6% | 24.6% | 236 | no | 11.8 h |
| Tiny Eden | 2026-09-07 | 33.3% | 26.7% | 300 | no | 22.8 h |
| Train Sim World® 7 | 2026-09-15 | 29.6% | 34% | 247 | yes | 14 h |
| Crimson Moon | 2026-09-01 | 27.7% | 41.3% | 300 | yes | 22.2 h |
| Halloween: The Game | 2026-09-08 | 27.3% | 32.3% | 300 | no | 92.7 h |
| Anime Shop Simulator ✨ | 2026-09-11 | 24.3% | 28% | 300 | no | 23.5 h |
| The Magus Circle | 2026-09-24 | 24.3% | 11.7% | 300 | no | 38.1 h |
| Backrooms: Code Yellow | 2026-09-25 | 21% | 48.3% | 300 | no | 16.3 h |
| Anymaker | 2026-09-18 | 20.9% | 51.7% | 211 | no | 18.6 h |
Fewest bug mentions
| Game | Release | Bug rate | Negative | Reviews in window | AI disclosure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes | 2026-09-17 | 0.3% | 0% | 300 | no |
| Normal Golf Game | 2026-09-21 | 0.3% | 2.3% | 300 | no |
| Worming from Home | 2026-09-04 | 0.3% | 0.7% | 300 | no |
| lily's world XD | 2026-09-17 | 1% | 2.7% | 300 | no |
| BOMBANANA! | 2026-09-02 | 1% | 3.7% | 300 | no |
| Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic - the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | 2026-09-09 | 1.3% | 8.3% | 300 | no |
| Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional | 2026-09-28 | 1.3% | 2.3% | 300 | no |
| TOEM 2 | 2026-09-29 | 1.3% | 10.7% | 300 | no |
| Happy Wheels | 2026-09-21 | 1.7% | 4% | 300 | no |
| DinoBones: Tidy Up the Museum | 2026-09-25 | 1.7% | 4% | 300 | no |
Method and limits
- Release list. Steam store search sorted by release date, games only (category 998), for every day of September 2026: 2739 titles. We keep the 923 with a review summary on the search page (Steam shows one from 10 reviews).
- Metadata.
store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails: type, genres, release date, total reviews. DLC and non-games are dropped (0 removed). - AI disclosure. The store page HTML, section “AI Generated Content Disclosure”. Present = flagged.
- Reviews.
IUserReviewsService/GetAppReviews, English, sorted by recency, limited to a window from the release date (00:00 UTC) to 14 days later, up to 300 reviews per game. A review “mentions a bug” when it matches the pattern\b(bug|bugs|bugged|buggy|crash|crashes|crashed|crashing|stutter|stutters|stuttering|stuttery|desync|desyncs|freeze|freezes|freezing|froze|frozen|glitch|glitches|glitchy|softlock|softlocked|soft-lock|soft-locked|broken)\b(case-insensitive). Games with fewer than 10 reviews in the window are kept in the CSV but excluded from medians (331 games). - Patches.
ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp, community announcements feed: first item after release whose title or first 400 characters match\b(patch|hotfix|hot-fix|hot fix|fix|fixes|fixed|update|updated|bugfix|bug fix)\b. Hours from release midnight UTC to that post. - Aggregates. Medians and quartiles per genre (min 8 games), per size tier, and for games with and without a disclosure. Rankings only for games with 200+ reviews.
Limits. Keyword matching counts “no bugs at all” as a mention, so rates overstate complaints by a few points in every group alike. English reviews only. Review windows start at the store release date, which can differ from the actual unlock time by up to a day. A game released late in the month had fewer days of reviews before the scrape. The patch heuristic reads announcements, not depot uploads, so silent patches are missed. Sample sizes are in every table; one month is one data point.
The script is scripts/steam_index.py in the site’s repository; it caches every response so a rerun reproduces the edition. Corrections: contact@jumbojelly.com.
Embed the “bug rate by genre” widget
A small iframe that shows the genre medians from the latest edition and links back here. Free to use, updates itself every month.
<iframe src="https://jumbojelly.com/widget/bug-rate/" title="Steam Launch Bug Index by genre" width="100%" height="320" style="border:0;max-width:560px" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://jumbojelly.com/steam-in-numbers/">Steam Launch Bug Index: Jumbo Jelly</a></p>How to cite
License CC BY 4.0: use the numbers and the files, attribute Jumbo Jelly with a link to this page.
Jumbo Jelly, “Steam launches in numbers: the Steam Launch Bug Index (October 2026)”, data as of 2026-10-27, https://jumbojelly.com/steam-in-numbers/Editions
| Edition | Releases | n in stats | Median bug rate | Patch ≤ 24 h | AI disclosure | Files |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | September 2026 | 592 | 6.5% | 22.1% | 24.8% | CSV · JSON |