Steam now warns you if that early access game you’re eyeing up has been abandoned by its devs

It’s got its ups and downs, but I rather like Steam early access. Being able to get in on the ground floor of something, watch it develop, and support developers whose ambitions might exceed their initial budgets is a neat thing. The downside, of course, is that sometimes the games just don’t get finished. They get left permanently in an alpha state, their devs vanishing in the night, never to be heard from again.

Which is an issue, certainly. Also an issue: there’s not been much on Steam to stop unsuspecting new players from picking up those abandoned games. Unless it’s garnered enough negative reviews to catch a punter’s attention, up to now it’s been very possible for someone to pick up a dead early access game on the assumption it’s still in active development.

I say ‘up to now’ because Valve has finally tried to rectify the problem. As spotted by SteamDB, early access games that have gone a long time without an update to their info boxes will now have a highlighted note added to the top of the ‘Early Access Game’ section on their store page, pointing out how long ago the last change was and warning that “The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date”. It seems to kick in after 12 months or so; I can only find the note on games that have gone update-less for 13 or more months, and it’s notably absent from, for instance, Kerbal Space Program 2.

You can see it in action on the page for long-fallow early access game Cavern Kings, where it clearly states that it last got an update all of eight years ago.

Which is all well and good, but I think the system could do with some tweaking. The game Heartbound, for instance, last got a patch to its beta branch four days ago, so it’s still undergoing active development, but anyone just cursorily glancing at its info box might be put off by the note that its last update came “over 13 months ago.” Steam might have to widen the net about what counts as an ‘update,’ since I imagine that’s contrary to the way many people will interpret the warning in its current state.

I’ve reached out to Valve to ask about that, and I’ll update this piece if I hear back.

Correction: The most recent update was to its beta branch, which it seems Steam doesn’t take into consideration. This piece has been updated to reflect that.