Gamers will need to upgrade to a newer operating system to ensure their Steam client and games get updated.
According to the official Steam Hardware Survey for December 2023, 98.95 percent of users on Windows are using Windows 10 or 11, with just .93 percent of users still clinging to Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1. Starting today, that not-quite-one-percent of users should really consider an upgrade, at least if they want to stay in Valve’s good graces. The company has announced that it’s officially ending support for Steam on Windows 7 and 8 as of the first of the year.
“Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality,” says the official notification on Valve’s support page. While Steam should technically keep working on older versions of Windows at least for some time, Valve isn’t making any promises. The alert says that the decision was made because Steam’s built-in browser relies on embedded components from Google Chrome, which has similarly ended support for the older versions of Windows.
Both Valve and Google are following in Microsoft’s official footsteps, since the company ended full support for Windows 7 back in 2020 and Windows 8.1 (the last official update) almost exactly a year ago. PC gamers tend to be pretty eager for the latest and greatest software, but some of them do seem oddly reticent to update to new operating systems for fear of unexpected performance downgrades. Perhaps a push from the de facto standard for PC game stores will give them that last bit of encouragement they need.
