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PC gamers stuck on older versions of Windows may eventually need to upgrade if they want to keep playing games in their Steam library. Valve announced this week that it will end support for 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 work on these versions of Windows.”
Given that Microsoft ended all support for both in January 2023, that timeline is still pretty generous for 14- and 11-year-old users of the operating system. GPU makers such as Nvidia and AMD also launched Windows 7 or Windows 8 long ago.
This move will affect a very small but persistent number of Steam users. According to Valve’s own survey data for February 2023, 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 make up just under 2% of all Steam usage. This isn’t second only to Windows 10 and Windows 11 (almost 95%), but all macOS versions combined account for only 2.37% and all Linux versions combined (including Steam Deck) only 1.27%. is.
According to Valve, the main culprit is the built-in Chromium-based browser that Steam actually uses to render the Steam store and other UIs. Chrome ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 around the same time Microsoft ended support for the operating system earlier this year. Versions that continue to work on Windows 7 and 8 are susceptible to security bugs and will introduce more and more rendering bugs and other functionality issues over time.
Upgrading to Windows 10 should be relatively easy for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users thanks to a free upgrade offer from Microsoft, even though it was supposed to end in 2016. If your PC is still running Windows 7 or 8, Windows 10 should do the same. Windows 10 will continue to receive security updates from Microsoft until at least October 2025. However, if you want to upgrade to Windows 11, perhaps or you can take your chances on an unsupported installation.Windows 11’s stricter hardware requirements make most PCs capable of running Windows 7 or Windows 8 unable to run Windows 11 will not run.
Valve recommends upgrading to a newer version of Windows now rather than waiting for the January 2024 cutoff. This is mainly because these PCs are unpatched and vulnerable to malware.
