Steam now warns you if an ‘early access’ PC game might be abandoned
Buyer beware, but still do your research.
It'll help for the legit abandoned.
Unfortunately for the developers trying to exploit the early access system we'll either get half finished games released (maybe with a quadruple A warning), or monthly updates that do nothing more than change the version number.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good
It also won't feed world hunger. .
Scarlet Hollow is a game that started being developed by 2021 and it is still being told by episodes with the last episode on hold since 2022. They did release a game between episodes, but then again it's a very large game with lots and lots of narrative branches.
Then I saw this: Note: The last update made by the developers was over 19 months ago. The information and timeline described by the developers here may no longer be up to date.
I would say yes but no, it is an incomplete game that gets very slow and gradual updates but it is definitely not abandoned by any terms: The developers release updates and news in a yearly basis and it seems to be continued alas in a glacial pace.
This feels like while this feature will be helpful to avoid early access unloved and discarded games, it will also be punishing those developers that release games as a part-time job, work on very small teams (or solo), or do complex and challenging projects.
Since this came to effect, there's nothing forbidding these authors to push update which has no new content except for maybe main menu "we're still alive" sign...
Or they can just post a short note update on what they are doing
Saw this recently with some silly free to download VTuber software that I don't remember the name of that hasn't been developed in over a year. Definitely would have picked it up just to mess around with it if it was getting updates.
Nice!