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

Steam now warns players when games released in early access have not been recently updated. As spotted by SteamDB, early access games that have not recently received an update will now carry a warning to prospective players, stating: "The last update made by the developer was over [X] months ago.

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.

It's not a universally applied system yet, but Steam will now tell players if an Early Access game hasn't been updated in over a year.

Valve is introducing a feature that will give users insight into which game available in Steam Early Access is rarely updated by developers.

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.

Valve has quietly implmented a useful new Steam feature warning users - and potential purchasers - how long it's been since an early access game last received an update. Steam early access has unquestionably helped a huge number of games get over the development finish line since its introduction in 2013,