Valve has just added a brand new feature to Steam that’s targeting developers who aren’t providing consumers finished products, and the community has unanimously decided it’s one of the best changes that Valve has made to the storefront in years.
Steam will now tell you whether or not an Early Access title is still being worked on by its developers, potentially saving users from spending money on a product that is no longer being supported and will potentially never be finished.
It seems the update adding the feature went live a couple of days ago, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it was added to Steam as Valve didn’t actually announce the feature.
You can see the new feature in effect if you go over to Pirate Software’s title Heartbound, which has been in Early Access since December 2018.
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A message can be read just above the demo button for the game that reads: “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.”
Steam users can currently enjoy Monster Hunter Wilds' second beta test.
Over on Bluesky, users were extremely happy to see a long requested feature like this going live.
“Good. Developers need to develop the games they are being paid for,” commented user @zoramystery, ”One time I paid $20 for the development of a game, and it didn't get released. Not even a beta. I'm still p**sed off.”
“What a great consumer friendly feature,” replied user @kingpoogie, “Love it!”
The odd part about the new feature is that, by the looks of things, Heartbound has actually received an update over the past few days.
However, the update was only for the development branch of the title, and not the main branch. I think because consumers can’t actually access the new patch, Steam doesn’t count the update on the game’s main page.