S team’s early access program helps small to medium-sized developers get an idea off the ground, but not every game actually does. Now, Valve has a notice designed to warn Steam

In recent months, Valve has been making moves to ensure more transparency on Steam. The latest move? Introducing a new warning on product pages for Early Access games that haven’t received updates in a long time. It was spotted by SteamDB in a Bluesky post:

It’s still not exactly clear what updates are substantial enough to reset the counter and how long it takes between updates for it to appear. Open-world survival zombie sim Project Zomboid has been in Early Access on Steam for over a decade and doesn’t show the new warning because it still receives regular updates. Its last one was in January.

When you click on an early access game on Steam, you might see a new note that could give an idea whether its developer has already abandoned the project. As SteamDB first reported, Steam has started adding notes on games' official pages if they haven't been updated in a while.

If too much time passes between Early Access game updates on Steam, Valve will add a warning notice to the product page.