Steam to drop support for Windows XP and Vista next year

[Xlucine]

It's irresponsible to connect an XP system to the net these days (given the lack of recent security updates, you're just feeding botnets), so this shouldn't affect anyone. If your system is airgapped, then steam won't get the update that stops it working on XP. There's probably a flavour of linux that would run on older hardware and still gets security updates too, how well does linux handle DX9 games?

[azrael-]

What everyone seems to forget is that you cannot run Steam in offline mode indefinitely. Steam needs to connect to the servers from time to time (can't recall how often) to verify that you are who you are and what you have access to. Other than that I believe you should have access to whatever you've paid for. Otherwise it's theft in my eyes.

BTW, the new Steam looks horrible. Takes up way too much screen area with a huge font and forced avatars etc. It's very much "in your face".

[DanceswithUnix]

..., how well does linux handle DX9 games?

Very patchy. If you are lucky you can run Wine to run your game, but many don't work. Thankfully games that old tend to have low requirements so the DX9 to OpenGL translation overheads aren't so bad if it does work.

But last time I tried I couldn't even get World of Warcraft to run in Linux and that is usually a top supported program in Wine.

[Otherhand]

My biggest worry is that, if this is how they treat old platforms, what's going to happen 10 years from now, when we're on Windows 13 and they do the same to Windows 10?

Nothing, because I'll be on Windows 13. I certainly won't be using a 10-year-old operating system.

All those XP/Vista accounts exist. The owners just need to upgrade the OS or at worst get a new computer. It's not really a "First they came for the Socialists" situation.

[Tabbykatze]

Removing XP/Vista support is necessary as it is a security nightmare. Support by Valve or anyone should have been dropped as soon as security updates for XP stopped in mainatream. The fact they kept it for so long is something you cannot put your nose up against when your old virus ridden and vulnerable OS is not longer supported.

I have had people try to justify XP continuing to be supported by major software vendors and the fact Microsoft charges companies $5mil/ year for extended support is your answer. Your XP OS is an offline only system and if its support is dropped, move on.

It isn't about subscription models versus persistent licensing, this is simply down to not having to support ridiculously old architectures and bogging down the dev team as well.

If you don't like that, oh well

[karelamella]

Why? Is there any problem to support windows xp and vista?

[3dcandy]

Why? Is there any problem to support windows xp and vista?

It's not safe security wise and is years out of date. Microsoft don't even support it properly any more so why should Steam?

[spacein_vader]

Why? Is there any problem to support windows xp and vista?

Aside from the reasons already given it also means you can't use modern technologies in your software that XP is incapable of running.

The most obvious example is that Steam uses the Chrome backend for rendering the store and community pages. The last version of Chrome to support XP was 50, the current version is 67. Imagine how many improvements, buxfixes and vulnerability patches have been implemented since V50.