Valve has announced that Steam will stop supporting older versions of Windows operating systems next year. The news of the end of compatibility was announced with the latest Steam update—the one many of us don't even read, but accept anyway to install the new version of the most popular PC game store.
This means that if you are playing on a computer running Windows 7, Windows 8 or 8.1, in order for the Steam client to work, you will need to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11. The change will take effect on January 1, 2024. with which they have given us nine months in advance to install a new version of Windows that is not outdated and exposed to errors.
Steam abandons Windows 8 and 7 for security reasons
The reason Valve says they're dropping support for Windows 7 and 8 is that Steam's new features rely on an integrated version of Google Chrome . That version no longer works on older versions of Windows.
On the other hand, future versions of Steam will require Windows security updates and features that are only present in Windows 10 and higher. In the end, it is a mixture of several things.
The percentage of affected users is low, but it is very likely that the case will be repeated in that they have to use old versions of Windows that cannot be updated due to incompatibilities with the new versions. According to the most recent Steam Software Survey, Windows 7 or 8 is currently present in 1,86% of active Steam users. But their figures are gradually falling, so that, when the day comes, the end of support may end up affecting a figure closer to 1,5%.
This isn't a small number of users, on a platform that encompasses hundreds of millions. That's at least 1.5 million users who will be unable to access their games because they don't have a version of Windows compatible with the launcher. But they've been notified almost a year in advance , and the prospect of not losing access to their games is likely the reason for them to upgrade to Windows 10.
Source: VG247
