I honestly prefer Valve's method. You as a consumer should be reading what you're buying before you purchase anyway, and you can still use their refund system if you somehow missed the warning.
Removing unfinished games from the storefront just increases the amount of lost media out there. These projects should be available for as long as possible simply for archival reasons.
How about if valve has an agreement with developers where if they release a game in early access, and then abandon it, it switches to free-to-play?
Developers don't have to pay for the servers, and the source code isn't released. Gamers get to still play it, if it had any redeeming qualities, or for nostalgia. And valve gets...uhh... community goodwill? Honestly the lack of benefits for valve is probably why this will never happen.
Just give me a notice before I buy, "Warning! This game is in early access and hasn't been updated in X amount of time. It may be abandoned."
If they're going to do anything else, block sales to the game after a certain period of inactivity and notify the dev to either update the game, delist, or make the game free.
That way the game isn't lost to time, people aren't getting scammed, and it places some accountability on the dev if they want to continue their project.
If you're not already aware, almost that exact warning message exists on steam now.
Even if they're abandoned, they can still have value in what already exists. Removing them entirely would be foolish. Perhaps making them free would be a good move, but I doubt Valve actually has the authority to decide the value of someone else's product, even if it is their storefront. A warning is the best solution IMO.
But someone might still enjoy the game, despite being broken.
Not necessarily broken, just not updated recently. Some games might be fine as is
Ok, I realize that I'm in the minority, but I want to pay creators for the time they have put into the game and encourage them to continue creating, even if they don't finish. It just so happens that well wishing doesn't pay bills and creators are more likely to try, fail, and resign than see the value in their art and retry or hone their craft/product.
I want to give money to artists, authors, musicians - anyone who is willing to spend their time and effort into making the world a little less awful because we live in a society that doesn't care about art or beauty unless it makes money. And sometimes the best way to tell a person to keep doing what they're doing is to help them get the basics taken care of and hope their effort is well placed as a result. I want to give them money for early access software. I believe in their vision as much as they did when they started. They have an idea that got them so excited that they did something about it. We need more of those people.
If they are confirmed abandoned, they should be free. Still have them listed in the store, but for free.
A cobra effect situation between valve and shovelware developers sounds like not the greatest idea.
Me and my brother once bought one of those Steam key mystery packs, it was only a few bucks and we did it for shits and giggles. The deal was we should each choose one of those games for the other and play them and at least seriously attempt to beat it if possible. The description said it included x amount of games with a value of at least x amount of dollars.
Turns out half of them were abandoned early-access games. Still for sale for way too much money. One of them was 49.99, which made the key bundle indeed be worth a lot. However the game was just an old Unreal project with some stock assets from the asset store. There wasn't even a game really and it kept crashing. Last updated 4 years ago.
Really disappointing, we thought we would have some fun with unknown terrible games. But we didn't expect them to be literally not a game. So instead we played Bad Way, a really fun but seriously flawed game. We had a blast.
Don't remove them but leave them out so I can get ideas what to pirate.
Retro Arcade Neon VR is the biggest travesty that was abandoned in early access that I have ever seen. So much potential...... Only to throw it away for ......Hypercharge Unboxed.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/465780/New_Retro_Arcade_Neon/
It was introduced during the infancies of VR with the HTC Vive with a very high financial point of entry to enjoy. Now PCVR and standalone is more popular and mainstream... It just came out too early before VR matured.
Pirate it if you are interested don't give them any money