Early access games are a great way to test titles in development, but the creators aren't forced to actually release them. As such, you may purchase an Early Access game, clock a few hours, and then realize that the game was last updated three years ago and will probably never see the light of day. Fortunately, a new Steam update will give you information on each Early Access game so you don't waste your money on a game that's dead the moment you install it.

Steam now lets you know when an Early Access game was last updated

SteamDB caught this change and posted about it on its Bluesky account. Now, in the Early Access detail box, Steam will automatically tell you how long a game has been left in limbo. We don't know for sure, but it seems to only appear if a game goes 12 months without an update. The warning is not immediately obvious, so you'll need to keep an eye out for it, but it's a good feature to have nonetheless.

With this update, hopefully, you'll be able to save some cash without blowing it on games that are dead in the water. Now you can more readily afford those overwhelmingly positive-rated Steam games that nobody talks about, or perhaps even grab a Steam Deck and have it replace your laptop.