Steam to end Win7/8 support in 2024

[AGTDenton]

Not surprising and simply following the trend of other software developers.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone on a retro XP system can still play old Steam games from that era?

Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support
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.

https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/musta...-january-2024/

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faq...4F2B-1321-800A

[Saracen999]

Makes me wonder how long before they stop supporting W10 too? Hopefully (and expect it to be) a good few years yet, because I seriously don't want W11, and just ordered a SteamDeck (and want to be able to play games in my library on PC too).

As for XP, I still have a system, but don't have Steam on it, or on 7/8 either, so can't comment on that.

[DanceswithUnix]

Makes me wonder how long before they stop supporting W10 too?

Windows 10 is still by far their dominant Windows platform with twice the users as Windows 11. Looks like Windows 7 was down to 1.5% of users, which is still more than the 1.2% of users on Linux and not much below Mac numbers so I doubt it is down to number of users. Perhaps those Win 7 machines are on outdated hardware and not buying enough to warrant the effort. Valve may also be able to tell if they are second or third machines in a household.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsur...am?platform=pc

[AGTDenton]

Yeah I'm still adjusting to W10 because with every update until 22H2 it changed drastically in the sense of administration, so it made getting used to it and being fluent a challenge, can't believe it's going to be EOL in 2 years. Felt like we were beta testing it the whole time.

I have W11 at home with Stardocks tools which makes it bearable but no more desirable.

I bought LTSC 2021 to get ten years of Win 10 on my home server. With this cut down version it's extremely usable & likeable! This is the version they should sell


I did a small bit of research with regards to loading old versions of Steam on XP. Without a lot of troubleshooting & downloading files from unknown sources it's pretty much a no go option. So with this in mind I would say Windows 7 & 8 will eventually suffer the same fate. Of course not much time has passed yet for these could be considered retro but give it time there might be a small community for it.