Valve is shaking things up for those browsing Steam Early Access titles. Now, if a game hasn’t received an update for over a year, you’ll be informed upfront.
The gaming community got wind of this change thanks to SteamDB. They’ve pointed out that a new warning message will greet users at the top of the Early Access developer Q&A section, giving clear information about when the game was last updated. Valve has made it official by tweaking Steamworks to reflect this addition.
Here’s how Valve explains it: “If a game hasn’t had an update or there’s been no ‘update’ type event from the developers for over a year, Steam will flag this on the store page. This note will be visible just above the Developer Questionnaire, alerting players to the lack of recent updates.”
This notification comes into play under certain conditions:
– If it’s been more than 12 months since any build was set to the ‘default’ branch in Steamworks.
– If it’s been over 12 months since the developer communicated an ‘update’ type event to players, be it a Major Update, Regular Update, or even just Patch Notes.
For as long as the Early Access platform has been around, there have been games that, unfortunately, were left hanging by their developers. This new feature seems aimed at addressing exactly that issue.
