If you’re one of those lost souls that still insist on using a decade-old Operating System on your device, we’ve got some bad news for ya. Steam has announced that, much like various other companies, they’ll be ceasing to provide support for older Windows installations, namely Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, and users will no longer be able to run its services if they happen to use such versions.
Support for the aforementioned systems has been in a tight spot for years now. Windows 10 quickly made them obsolete and rose to the top as the new “popular” version, and various developers have stopped releasing updates for them, but there are still various purists who would still refuse to update to the modern versions. But for some users, the update day might be finally coming.
A Few More Months of Support
In their official announcement regarding support, Valve has stated the following:
As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows.
The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.
So in summary, users have around 9 more months from now to make their update if they wish to keep using Steam. Most people are on Windows 10 or higher already, but there’s probably still a significant amount of people who will be affected by the lack of support.
Related: How to Refund a Game on Steam
Steam’s not the only one to “blame” because as stated in the announcement, Google Chrome (and various Chromium-based browsers) are not supporting those older systems anymore either. Hell, even Microsoft itself has not been supporting those versions for a while now. Essential updates still drop from time to time, but some problems are bound not to be fixed, and the recommended solution will always be to update to a newer Windows version.
If you’re still one of those loyal 7 users, it’s time to let it join Windows XP and its older siblings at the depths of the realm of outdated Operational Systems. The compatibility problems that previously existed in 10 are no more, so there’s little to no reason not to try it out.
