The Steam notice can tell you if a game that still needs work hasn’t been updated in months or even years.
The Steam notice can tell you if a game that still needs work hasn’t been updated in months or even years.
Feb 5, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC
Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge
Antonio G. Di Benedetto is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
Steam’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 users when they visit an early access game’s store page if it’s been a minute since the last update. If the dev’s lofty goals for a 1.0 release were a little too lofty, then it’s probably time to do some due diligence before spending money on what may be abandonware.
Valve hasn’t formally announced the feature, but both Eurogamer and PC Gamer point it out as first highlighted by SteamDB. One example where you can see this warning in action is the store listing for Cavern Kings, which flags that its developers have not updated the game in over eight years.
A screenshot of the Cavern Kings store page on Steam shows its warning to players that it’s likely abandoned.
That’s probably long enough to safely say the game is abandoned (though the developer has since worked on another title). On the other hand, Pirate Software’s Heartbound currently has a warning for not being updated in 13 months. And the recent “mostly negative” user reviews track with that. But the developer just posted an update note in January to explain the hiatus, and also dropped a patch days ago on February 1st. So, this may not be a fully fleshed-out or foolproof feature just yet.
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