Steam Introduces Warning for Early Access Titles Without Updates for a Year

Valve is now implementing a new feature to help users who explore Steam Early Access games. They’ll be notified if a game hasn’t received any updates for over a year.

This change was initially identified by SteamDB. When you visit an Early Access game’s page, you’ll see a warning at the top of the developer Q&A section, informing you about the last time the game was updated.

To clarify this update, Valve has added more details on Steamworks. They stated:

“If it has been more than 12 months (one year) since the developers of a game have updated the game and posted an ‘update’ type event to tell players about it, Steam will add a note to the store page, just above the Developer Questionnaire letting players know that the game has not updated in a while.”

This message will pop up under the following circumstances:

– It’s been over a year since the game’s build was assigned to the default branch in Steamworks.
– It’s been more than a year since the developer posted an update event, whether it’s a Major Update, Regular Update, or Patch Notes, to let players know about new developments.

Early Access, since its inception, has seen titles that developers have completely abandoned. This change aims to address those concerns by keeping players informed.