Valve is stepping up to make sure gamers are informed about Steam Early Access games that haven’t seen updates in a while. If you’re browsing these titles, you’ll now see a notification if a game hasn’t had an update for over a year.
This change was first noticed by SteamDB and comes in the form of a cautionary note placed prominently at the top of the Early Access developer’s Q&A section. This message clearly states when the project was last updated, providing timely and relevant information to potential players.
Valve has also provided more details on this update through Steamworks. They stated, “Should it have been more than 12 months since the game developers released any updates or hosted an ‘update’ event to keep players informed, a notification will appear on the store page. It will be displayed above the Developer Questionnaire to notify players of the absence of recent updates.”
The warning triggers under either of these conditions: if over 12 months have passed since a game build was assigned to the ‘default’ branch in Steamworks, or if the developer hasn’t posted an ‘update’ event—be it a Major Update, a Regular Update, or even Patch Notes—to communicate with players for the same time frame.
Early Access has always been a bit of a mixed bag. There have been instances where games were left hanging by their developers, never reaching full completion. This new feature aims to give players a clearer picture and help them make more informed decisions about where they invest their time and money.
