Valve has announced that its Steam online game platform will no longer support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 starting from January 1st, 2024.
The Steam client software will stop working on these out-of-support Windows versions, and Valve is recommending users upgrade to a more recent Windows version to continue playing their games via Steam.
Valve requires core features in Steam that rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer works on older Windows versions.
Future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates that are only present in Windows 10 and above.
Valve has strongly encouraged users to upgrade their Windows 7/8/8.1 systems as soon as possible before support ends in January 2024 to secure them from malware or other malicious attacks targeting them if left exposed on the internet.
Malware can cause the PC, Steam, and games to perform poorly or crash. It can also be used to steal the credentials for the Steam account or other services. Users running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free using a digital license, even though the company announced it would end this promotional offer on July 29, 2016.
This move by Valve comes after Microsoft stopped providing security updates and technical support for all Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 editions on January 10th, 2023.
The impact of this change will likely be minimal, with only 1.58% of users still using Windows 7 while 0.36% run Windows 8.1, according to the Steam February 2023 Hardware & Software survey.
Google also announced that Chrome version 110 would be dropping support for Windows 7/8.1 starting February 2023.
Other vendors have already dropped support for the two out-of-support operating systems before Microsoft announced they’d stop receiving security updates. For instance, NVIDIA stopped providing Windows 7 and 8.1 drivers last year in October 2021.
