One of my first real videogame passions was Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard’s now-defunct MOBA brought together all of its various universes and pitted them against one another in a base race for the ages. I could take on Diablo as Sylvanas Windrunner, or demolish foes as Raynor with Lucio healing me up – HotS was truly special. But I started playing not long before Blizzard confirmed that it wasn’t getting any more content, only bug fixes and minor adjustments. The feeling of knowing that the game I loved had been abandoned was genuinely crushing. Now, to avoid you feeling a similar sense of woe, Steam is flagging abandoned early access games before you buy them.
Steam early access has become much more common in the last few years, with what feels like three out of four indie games, and sometimes even triple-A titles, spending a bit of time in EA before launching in full. There are myriad reasons for this: developers want to avoid the fates of things like No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077, and simultaneously get their community involved in the game-making process. Of course, there are also monetary benefits, with free-to-play games often using Steam Early Access as quasi-Kickstarters with Founder’s Packs and other purchasable goodies.
But some games never leave early access, or take a very long time to finally hit 1.0. We’ve written about a whole slew of them here on PCGamesN. There’s zombie survival game 7 Days to Die, which spent 11 years in early access, as well as Angels Fall First, which was around for a decade before its final launch.
Fortunately, the Steam pages for these games, and many like them, were regularly updated. The community was vibrant and the developers kept up the communication – you could buy into early access and feel assured that the finished work was inbound. But what if you really like the look of an upcoming game, but the page has gone quiet? What if something is available in early access, but it hasn’t been updated in a while?
Now, you can identify these abandoned games with ease. In the blue ‘Early Access’ box that pops up on qualifying Steam pages, there’s a yellow note section that tells you when the game was last updated, and the latest piece of relevant news. This appears when a game has been silent for over a year.
Take NGU Industries for example. First released on April 5 2021, a curator tag states that the developer allegedly abandoned the project in September, 2021. As a result, the early access box now reads: “The last update made by the developers was over three years ago. The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date.”
Another game, Art of War: Red Tides has a similar tag, highlighting that it hasn’t been touched for seven years. It’s a small but welcome change that’ll hopefully avoid any disappointment and waiting around for refunds.
If you’re looking for a brand new adventure that’s still alive and thriving, here’s our list of all the best free Steam games. Alternatively, our guide to all the best PC games is perfect for expanding out our library and broadening your virtual horizons.
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