The Steam notice can tell you if a game that still needs work hasn’t been updated in months or even years.

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.

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:

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.

A new update has been made to Steam, warning users about the last time an early access game was given an update.

Steam has added a new warning to the Steam pages of early-access games that have not been updated in a long time.

Steam now warns PC gamers if an Early Access game hasn't seen a recent update.

Valve just implemented a welcome warning message that proves the company continues to put its Steam customers first.