Steam adds warning for ‘abandoned’ early access titles

Steam is now warning players if an early access title hasn’t been updated in several months.

As spotted by SteamDB, an example warning reads “Note: The last update made by the developers was over 13 months ago. The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date.”

It appears that this warning will appear on games that haven’t received an update in over a year. Several early access titles, such as Hades 2, don’t sport this warning. Similarly, much older early access titles seem to be exempt from this warning.

While Steam does offer one of the most robust refund systems of any of gaming’s large digital market places, there is currently no refund system in place for a game that is abandoned mid-way through development.

Steam will allow no-questions-asked refunds of any game on the platform, as long as the player hasn’t played the game for more than two hours. Full refunds may be offered in other exceptional circumstances, such as high-profile performance issues.

Since the program’s inception, Steam has warned players, “games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.”