Those who browse Valve's Steam platform are pretty much used to seeing a whole lot of early access releases. These are games that are still in development, but Steam users can purchase them to experience them in their early states and still support the developer prior to the official 1.0 release. However, there are also games that have remained in early access for more than a few months, much longer than what the product description had originally promised.
It's these games that Valve is putting a note on in a new change on the store. Heading to a store page of an early access game that hasn't been updated in months will now show a new update inside the information box informing players of the apparent timeline misalignment:
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.
The above message example is seen on BattleBit Remastered's Steam store page. The number of months displayed on the message will change depending on the game the user is looking at.
The note only seems to be visible when an early access game hasn't been updated in at least a year, so developers who go a few months between their updates don't need to worry about being hit with the warning message. However, this may adversely affect games that push updates to beta builds, which means the note will still be put on the store page for not updating the base game.
Prior to this, a potential customer would have to research an early access game's development progress or comb through new Steam user reviews to find out if they are about to purchase a long-abandoned game. Considering even a minor update will remove the notice, and it doesn't block players from purchasing the titles still, this should become a well-received update to Steam by the community.
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