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PC gamers sticking with old versions of Windows may finally need to upgrade if they want to keep playing the games in their Steam libraries. Valve announced this week that it will stop supporting Steam on Windows 7 and Windows 8 on January 1, 2024. "After that date," the company's brief announcement reads, "the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows."
That timeline is still fairly generous to users of the 14- and 11-year-old operating systems, given that Microsoft ended all support for both in January 2023. GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD also stopped supporting their latest GPUs in Windows 7 or Windows 8 quite a while ago.
This move will affect a vanishingly small but persistent number of Steam users. According to Valve's own survey data for February of 2023, the 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 account for a little less than two percent of all Steam usage. This is almost nothing next to Windows 10 and Windows 11 (nearly 95 percent), but all macOS versions combined account for only 2.37 percent, and all Linux versions combined (including the Steam Deck) add up to just 1.27 percent.
The main culprit, according to Valve, is the built-in Chromium-based browser that Steam actually uses to render the Steam store and other bits of the UI. Chrome dropped support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 right around the same time that Microsoft ended support for the operating systems earlier this year. Versions that still work in Windows 7 and 8 will be susceptible to security bugs and, increasingly, rendering bugs and other functional problems as time goes on.
arstechnica.com
That timeline is still fairly generous to users of the 14- and 11-year-old operating systems, given that Microsoft ended all support for both in January 2023. GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD also stopped supporting their latest GPUs in Windows 7 or Windows 8 quite a while ago.
This move will affect a vanishingly small but persistent number of Steam users. According to Valve's own survey data for February of 2023, the 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 account for a little less than two percent of all Steam usage. This is almost nothing next to Windows 10 and Windows 11 (nearly 95 percent), but all macOS versions combined account for only 2.37 percent, and all Linux versions combined (including the Steam Deck) add up to just 1.27 percent.
The main culprit, according to Valve, is the built-in Chromium-based browser that Steam actually uses to render the Steam store and other bits of the UI. Chrome dropped support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 right around the same time that Microsoft ended support for the operating systems earlier this year. Versions that still work in Windows 7 and 8 will be susceptible to security bugs and, increasingly, rendering bugs and other functional problems as time goes on.
Game over: Steam won’t run on Windows 7 or 8 after January 1, 2024
Windows 7 still runs on more Steam PCs than every version of Linux combined.
