Steam Officially Ended Support For Windows 7, 8 & 8.1

Steam Officially Ended Support For Windows 7, 8 & 8.1

Valve, makers of the Steam storefront widely known among PC gamers, is officially shutting down its support for legacy Windows systems, which now includes Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1. This policy is officially in effect starting on Jan 1, 2024, and the company urges players to move to newer Windows systems to continue receiving quality-of-life updates.

For those intending to stay on these systems (which account for less than 1% of Steam userbase today), games will continue to run – however, Valve warns that things may break beyond this point given its dependency on some elements of Google Chrome (which has already stopped receiving support for the aforementioned operating systems in early 2023).

“This change is required as core 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,” Valve wrote in the support article. “We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024, but we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date.”

If you have a system that still runs on one of these operating systems, consider upgrading it – as these have been unsupported, thus posing potential security risks as malware actors may utilize unpatched exploits to harm the system, or steal the user’s credentials. If that is not an option, consider leaving the system completely off the internet to maintain some level of security, albeit limited. (Alternatively, you can go the Linux route – if that’s your cup of tea.)

Pokdepinion: That means Windows 10 is next – hopefully we’ll have a few more years to stretch.