Steam Introduces Alerts for Early Access Games Inactive for a Year

Valve has introduced a new feature for those who browse Steam’s Early Access games, informing players if a game hasn’t been updated in over a year.

The update was highlighted by SteamDB, revealing a warning message placed prominently at the top of the Early Access developer Q&A. This message alerts users about the timing of the latest update for any given project.

In line with this, Valve has revised the Steamworks guidelines to reflect this change. They stated, “If more than 12 months (one year) have passed since a game’s developers last released an update and posted an event to inform players, Steam will display a note on the store page, right above the Developer Questionnaire, to let players know that the game hasn’t seen updates for some time.”

This warning kicks in when either of these conditions are met:

– Over 12 months have passed since a new build was added to the ‘default’ branch in Steamworks.
– Over 12 months have passed since the developer last communicated an ‘update’ event to players, covering all three types of updates: Major Update, Regular Update, or Patch Notes.

Since its inception, Early Access has included games that sadly, have been abandoned by their creators.