Steam Introduces Alerts for Early Access Games Inactive for a Year

Valve is stepping up to give more transparency to those exploring Steam Early Access games by introducing a new feature: a notification for games that haven’t seen updates in over a year.

This change was uncovered by SteamDB. It adds a cautionary message at the top of the Early Access developer Q&A section, clearly stating when the last update for a game was made. Valve has even updated their Steamworks system to elaborate on this introduction.

In Valve’s own words, “If a game’s developers have not rolled out an update or posted an ‘update’ type event for over a year, Steam will display a note on the store page, right above the Developer Questionnaire, to inform players of the lack of recent updates.”

This notification pops up under two specific conditions: if more than 12 months have passed since a build was assigned to the ‘default’ branch in Steamworks, or if over a year has passed since the developer communicated an ‘update’ type event, which encompasses Major Update, Regular Update, or Patch Notes.

Early Access has long had its share of games that have been left in the dust by their developers. This new measure by Valve aims to keep players better informed about the status of the projects they’re interested in.