Steam now warns PC gamers if an Early Access game hasn’t seen a recent update.
As spotted by SteamDB, an extra note now appears inside the Early Access Game or Software box if it hasn’t been updated in some time. We’ve found notifications like this on several dormant games, as well as Early Access software tools currently available for sale on Steam. The exact window seems unclear, though it does seem to kick in after about a year.
This joins the box of information already shown for Early Access games, which includes disclaimers that the game or software is incomplete and may (or may not) change further. The new note reveals how long it’s been since the last update was made by a project’s developer, and states: “The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date.”
The benefit of this notification is fairly straightforward: it notifies potential buyers that an Early Access project may no longer be supported, or have extremely notable gaps in its update timeline.
There are some concerns about what constitutes an update, though. As PC Gamer noted, a game with a recent update still had the tag on its page. This could possibly be due to the update going through the Steam Betas option, rather than an update to the main download. But it raises an interesting question about what constitutes a recent update, especially for games that utilize branching builds.
Early Access is clearly here to stay, as major games continue to utilize it for development. Having a little extra info for potential buyers should hopefully make things a bit clearer and confident in their shopping experience.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
