Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

www.neowin.net Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

Customers sticking to the good-old (and dead) Windows 7 now have one more reason to ditch the operating system: as of January 1, 2024, Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1::Customers sticking to the good-old (and dead) Windows 7 now have one more reason to ditch the operating system: as of January 1, 2024, Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

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106 comments

Not really Steam's fault, their app is built in a chromium browser, which stopped supporting those OSes a few years ago. A perfect example of Google having too much control over the Internet. This is what happens when big companies are allowed to purchase their competitors.

Edit: people in this thread are either really forgetting how much trust google used to have with basically the entire Internet. They were seen as the "good guys" for a long time.

Or they're forgetting how unique and revolutionary chromium based desktop apps were when they first came out. It is a colossal pain in the ass to create a modern browser, if you have a web page in your desktop app like steam does, it quickly became a very difficult, time consuming, and virtually fruitless endeavor to develop a headless browser just to sit within your desktop app when you could just go with chromium.
- And if memory serves me right, Microsoft is dropping W7, 8, and 8.1 support this year too. I love to shit on Google, but I also love to shit on Microsoft.
  
  Especially since W10 EOL is on the horizon.
  
  microsoft dropped windows 7 support like 3 years ago
  
  A thing I didn't consider: many steam games still support Windows 7 and 8, so... What about them?
- Google (or any other browser vendor) never forced anyone to rely on a web browser engine to develop desktop applications.
  
  This is what happens when developers make trade-offs for convenience at the expense of control.
  
  Also in Steams’s case the pre-Windows 10 Steam user base is also tiny, and may not be considered commercially viable to support regardless.
  
  No they never forced them but they said "hey here's this really awesome sandboxed platform that runs on almost any os, and it's a modern browser!" That's really enticing to a platform like steam where most of their app is web based. Steam isn't a desktop application, it's a hybrid application that needs a web browser. Do you know how hard it is to upkeep a modern browser? There's a reason it's pretty much only chromium and Mozilla making browsers. It's not laziness, it made sense, and Google was the only one making anything like that at the time for developers to use.
  
  Once Google had the market share, they started making changes that they knew would affect everyone using their platform, and that's how they wanted it.
- Windows 8 is over 10 years old and was EoL years ago. No distro is maintaining that level of support outside of corporate and even that's in the specialized more expensive custom contracts.
  
  Nobody needs Steam's "support". They just need Steam to unlock their DRM for games that they have been playing for years and Steam has now broken.
- Yeah, right… it’s my fault that Valve decided to use Chromium crap in their client.
  Fanboys don’t even question themselves if it didn’t made sense to have a lite version of the client without the browser, you know, to play games! (͡•_ ͡• )
  
  Never said it was your fault, I explicitly said it was Google's doing but ok be mad if you want to
Linux
- It uses Chromium on Linux too. It uses DRM on Linux too.
  
  The real answer is GoG.
  
  Honesty for a lot of older games gog is the answer. A lot of older games just don't run well or at all on proton.
  
  Though you could also just get an old console to play them on and never worry about updates breaking things again.
  
  Nah, gog doesn't do anything to suppory Linux. Valve is the reason Linux gaming is as good as it is. Pretty much all the games that are on gog are also drm free on steam.
  
  Why does it matter if Steam uses Chromium on Linux. It's not like Gecko dropped embed support or anything
  
  Fuck GoG
- The "let them eat cake" cry for social media.
  
  Yes, except If cake were free and accessible to anyone regardless of silverware or plates.
I bet, we don't find a single Windows 8 user who uses Steam on that system. Similar applies to Win7.
- Not anymore since it no longer works.
  
  I was still using Steam on Windows 7 as late as last month. Losing access to Steam was one motivation to finally upgrade my computer.
  
  Why not switch to Linux? There is several ones which works well with steam
- Wrong, I used Steam under Win 7 from time to time until December. For some games it doesn't really matter and I use old machines for fun.
- Win 8 was listed just under 1%
- I used to be a Win8 user who had Steam
We're a GoG-first house, here.

I get that steam dropping win7 was unavoidable based on their shitty choice of browser base, but the alternative was only Firefox and we know how Mozilla-the-app went.

Anyway, GoG gives us control over our purchased copies, and I like that.
- There was a time when software didn’t need an entire browser engine to run. We used to call them native applications.
  
  Although looking at how small the pre-Windows 10 customer base is I imagine Valve would have considered it not commercially viable to continue supporting however easy maintaining the codebase was.
- Why pay for DRM when there's a legal, user-friendly alternative? GoG is the best. Proof that we can still have nice things.
  
  I don't go as far as to boycott Steam, but GoG is my first choice.
- But, how about my funny and stupid reviews on the store page, and my useless badges and cards? /s
- GoG or itch only, launch with lutris. I just don't want to risk putting up with this.
I'm not sure why people blame mostly Google for this
Microsoft stopped supporting them long time ago first, in case of Windows 7 it's almost 4 years now
Direct purchace (if dev is trusted) > GOG > Steam > anything else
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

My setup (it has been destroyed by Gabe)
- *Google
It is ridiculous that Steam won't let you play your games you payed for outside of steam. Games that you've played for years on Windows 7 suddenly no longer play. Steam is like a DRM system that suddenly stops working and makes all the stuff you bought worthless.
- What if a security exploit happens to affect that older version of Steam that’s no longer updated and somebody’s able to hack your account change your password change your email now they have a brand new entire steam library that you no longer have anymore. Would you rather that? This is more of them covering themselves legally, so if that were to happen, they cannot be sued
  
  Would you rather that?
  
  I would rather Steam let me play all my games I legally purchased on Windows 7 outside of steam. If Steam is not going to work on Windows 7 than stay the hell out of the way and let me play the games I bought and have installed on my computer.
  
  I hope somebody sues them for stealing their purchased games.
- Are you running an OS that hasn't received a security update in a year (if you purchase the ESU packages)???
  
  Dude, at least move on to Windows 10 or something, that's just you taking bad decisions at this point.
  
  I like Windows 7 precisely because I still have complete control over my computer. Microsoft cannot brick my computer on a whim like they have the power to with later versions of windows.
- Yeah I don't blame valve for Microsoft dropping security updates and neglecting the last good version of windows. I've switched to Linux where this will never happen.
  
  It's a Chromium issue, not a Windows issue.
- Note that dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 came as part of a butterfly effect of the Chromium project - which Steam depends on - dropping support.
- Steam is literally DRM. But nobody wants to acknowledge that.
  
  It's a store and content downloader. Buy games that don't implement steamworks and you can copy the install folder to keep playing on windows 7 just fine without logging in.
  
  Steam isn't DRM, it's a game storefront/downloader that offers developers the option of DRM when they publish their game.
  
  Plenty of games have zero DRM, and plenty of games do. I wish they'd make it clearer which do and which don't, but that's a separate issue.
  
  I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.
- It is ridiculous that Steam won't let you play your games you payed for outside of steam
  
  Very easy to run your previously purchased steam games without Steam. Search "Steam emulator", follow the GitHub or Codeberg link, and problem solved...
  
  Won't help with games that use their own custom DRM though.
  
  Thanks! I will try.
- You’re right with what you said except for Steam is not like DRM. Steam is DRM!
  People will defend Valve with tooth and nails, but like every other digital system, one day it will fuck with their users (my guess is when Gabe Newell retires).
  I can barely wait for that day, to see thousands of posts of users crying, because they never purchased anything, only rented! ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
  
  Plenty of people hated Steam when it first came out, it was a controversial thing when games started to require it.
  
  Steam has only become as popular as it is because Valve responded to much of that criticism, and improved it enough to become “acceptable” DRM in the minds of most gamers. People defend it because it came to work (mostly) seamlessly and offer additional beneficial features. Unlike many other far jankier platforms/launchers which have been developed with minimum effort as more transparent cash grabs.
  
  A DRM free world be be ideal, but we rarely get an ideal world, so people settle for the least worst instead.

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