The State of Early Access 2026

active.games checks every game in Steam Early Access for new builds and patch notes, including beta branches. This report looks at that whole set at once. It covers 11,116 games that were in Early Access on October 24, 2026 and 162,057 update posts going back to 2013. How we counted is explained in the methodology section at the end.

How many Early Access games are still being updated?

About a third. 31.8% of games currently in Early Access shipped a build or posted patch notes in the last 90 days. A much smaller group, 6%, combines a recent update with a steady month-to-month rhythm, which is what our Actively updated label requires.

Most of the rest have stalled. 8.4% last updated between 90 and 180 days ago (slowing down), and 59.9% have gone past 180 days (no recent updates). The median game in Early Access was last updated 369 days ago.

Looking at the past 12 months the same way, 52.3% of games had no month with an update at all, and only 0.6% updated in every one of the 12 months. The median game that updated at least once posted 5 update notes in that year, and 11.5% of all games posted 12 or more.

When do Early Access games stop getting updates?

Usually early. The share of games still updating drops by almost half between the first six months and the second, then keeps sliding. After five years in Early Access, fewer than one in ten games updated in the last 90 days.

For games that have already gone quiet (more than 180 days without an update), we measured the gap between their Early Access launch and their last update. Half went quiet within 4.0 months. A quarter stopped within 25 days of launch, and 71.6% within the first year. Only about one in seven kept going past two years before stopping.

Launch year tells the same story. Of games that entered Early Access in 2025 and are still there, 35.7% updated in the last 90 days. For the 2022 group it is 11.8%, and for 2019 it is 8.6%.

One caution: these are games that are still in Early Access. A 2019 game that reached 1.0 in 2023 isn't in the 2019 row, so older rows lean toward games that never finished.

If you want to check a specific game before you buy, our guide to how the update labels work covers what we look at.

Which Early Access genres are updated the most?

Games built around systems tend to keep updating. Management, resource management, sandbox, base building and crafting games all sit well above the overall rate. These are genres where adding content over time is a natural fit, which may be part of it. Horror, FPS, puzzle and especially VR games are less likely to have updated recently.

Tags overlap, and a game can carry many of them, so treat these as tendencies rather than clean categories. Each tag shown covers at least 800 games. For a closer look at one genre, see our list of survival games still being updated and co-op games still being updated.

Do better-reviewed Early Access games update more consistently?

Yes, by a wide margin. Among games with at least 50 Steam reviews, the share that updated in the last 90 days rises with every step up in review score. The median consistency score climbs from 0 for games under 70% positive to 28 for games at 90% or higher.

The rank correlation between review score and consistency is 0.39 across 2,949 games, which is a moderate link. This data can't say which way it runs. Regular updates may earn better reviews, players may review a game more kindly when it's clearly being worked on, or well-run studios may simply do both. The reviews here are the current totals, not reviews from before and after an update.

Popularity shows an even stronger pattern. 71.5% of games with 10,000+ reviews updated in the last 90 days, against 25.8% of games with 10 to 99 reviews.

The newest games skew the lowest bucket upward, since they have had little time to collect reviews but are often still in their busy first months.

Does having a publisher make a difference?

A small one overall and a clearer one among established games. Most Early Access games are self-published: the developer and publisher are the same, or no publisher is listed. Across every game, 34.9% of games with an outside publisher updated in the last 90 days, compared with 31.1% of self-published games.

Limiting it to games with at least 100 reviews, which filters out many tiny releases, the gap widens on steadiness. Publisher-backed games had a median consistency score of 23 and self-published games 12, with 54.1% and 48% updated in the last 90 days.

Publisher-backed games also tend to have more reviews, so part of this gap overlaps with the popularity pattern above. Free-to-play games, for what it's worth, were less likely to have updated recently than paid ones (24.6% against 32.8%).

How do Early Access games deliver their updates?

Most announce them. Among games that updated in the last 90 days, the most recent signal was a patch note for 59.5%, a new public build with no newer post for 34.3%, and a beta branch build for 6.2%.

That last group matters because Steam's own notice for Early Access games that haven't updated in 12 months ignores beta branches. Roughly one in sixteen recently updated games would look quieter than it is if you only checked the public branch. A quarter of games that updated at all in the past year (24.6%) had at least one month where the only evidence was a build with no patch notes.

When do Early Access games usually update?

Fridays are the busiest day for update posts and weekends the quietest. Over the past 12 months, 17.3% of update posts went out on a Friday and 11.4% on a Sunday.

Across the year, update posts built through spring and peaked in late summer, with September the busiest month at 11.1%. November and January were the quietest at 5.8% each.

How many Early Access games disclose AI-generated content?

17.9% of games currently in Early Access have filled in Steam's AI Generated Content Disclosure. The share has risen quickly since Steam introduced the form in early 2024. Among games that entered Early Access in 2026, it is 42.9%.

Older games show low rates partly because the form didn't exist when they launched, and developers who never file it aren't counted. The disclosure covers anything from a few generated textures to fully generated assets, so it isn't a quality signal on its own.

Which Early Access games update most consistently?

These games, each with at least 1,000 reviews, posted an update in every one of the last 12 months and have a consistency score of 100:

• ARK: Survival Ascended, in Early Access since 2023, 60% positive
• Gray Zone Warfare, in Early Access since 2024, 72% positive
• Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, in Early Access since 2025, 89% positive
• Brighter Shores, in Early Access since 2024, 67% positive
• BitCraft Online, in Early Access since 2025, 72% positive
• NavalArt, in Early Access since null, 89% positive

A few veterans are still going after more than five years, including War of Rights (2018), Obenseuer (2018), Heartbound (2018), Volcanoids (2019) and Intruder (2019). The full ranking is on our most consistent Early Access games list.

Methodology

Data date. All figures were computed on October 24, 2026 from the active.games database. Review scores and AI disclosures are the values Steam showed at that time.

Which games count. Steam apps listed as games that were in Early Access on that date and already released, the same filter our public lists use. That came to 11,116 games. Unreleased “coming soon” pages, software and tools are excluded. AI-disclosed games are included here even though our lists hide them by default.

What counts as an update. The newest of a public branch build, a beta branch build, or a patch note or update post on Steam. “Updated in the last 90 days” means that signal is 90 days old or newer. The labels and the consistency score follow our scoring method. The consistency score covers the last 12 calendar months, and games under three months into Early Access aren't scored yet.

Timing and update counts come from 162,057 Steam update posts from the games above. Days are in UTC. Not every developer posts patch notes, so post counts undercount quiet build-only updates.

Publisher. A game counts as self-published when no publisher is listed or the publisher list shares a name with the developer list. Studio size isn't available, so this is a rough stand-in.

Caveats

• Only games still in Early Access are included. Games that reached 1.0 or were removed from Steam aren't, so the older launch years lean toward games that never finished. This report can't measure how long it takes to reach 1.0.
• We hold only the current build on each branch, not past builds. A month whose only evidence was a since-replaced build with no patch notes can be missed.
• Review scores and player data are current snapshots, not history, so we can compare games but not show how a game changed after an update.
• All comparisons are correlations. Nothing here shows that one factor causes another.
• Steam tags are applied by players and overlap heavily.

Frequently asked questions