Steam Introduces Alerts for Early Access Games Inactive for a Year

Valve now offers a helpful heads-up for those exploring Steam Early Access games—players will be alerted if a game hasn’t seen an update in over a year.

This new feature was identified by SteamDB, which noticed the introduction of a warning message appearing prominently at the top of the Early Access developer Q&A section. This notice conveniently informs users about the last time a project’s details were refreshed.

Additionally, Valve has made some modifications to Steamworks to elaborate on this update.

“If a game has gone without an update for more than a year, and no ‘update’ event has been shared with players, Steam will place a notification on the store page, right above the Developer Questionnaire,” Valve explained. “This is to inform players that the game hasn’t received recent updates.”

The warning will be triggered under two conditions:

– It’s been over a year since a build was assigned to the ‘default’ branch on Steamworks.
– It’s been over a year since any ‘update’ type event was shared, enlightening players about changes. This covers all three ‘update’ categories: Major Update, Regular Update, or Patch Notes.

Throughout its history, the Early Access platform has featured numerous titles that developers have unfortunately abandoned altogether.