Steam ends support for Windows 7 and 8
Steam has officially ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. Users on the legacy versions of the operating systems will no longer receive updates for the Steam client.
It's not unusual for major services to end support for operating systems that are outdated. For example, Steam ended support for macOS El Capitan and Sierra in September 2023. It did so because Apple no longer provides security patches for these operating systems.
Microsoft discontinued support for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 in January 2023. Many software vendors including browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, have stopped supporting the operating systems due to security risks from unpatched vulnerabilities, and potential malware threats. Similarly, Valve had announced its plans to end support for Windows 7 and 8 on January 1, 2024. That's precisely what has happened now.
Steam stops supporting Windows 7 and 8
In case you didn't know, the Steam client on desktop is based on Google Chromium, and since Chrome has ended support for Windows 7, Steam has to follow suit. This doesn't necessarily mean you won't be able to use Steam on the said operating systems. Valve's official announcement mentions that it expects the Steam client and games to work on the older operating systems for some time, even without updates for the client. But the company is not guaranteeing continued functionality anymore. The announcement mentions that future versions of Steam will require some feature and security updates that are only present in Windows 10 and above.
Not many gamers are still using Windows 7 and 8
If you take a look at Steam's hardware survey, you can see that only a small fraction of gamers are still using the old operating systems. 0.68% of Steam users are running it on a Windows 7 64-bit PC, while
Windows 7 has a share of 0.06%. Windows 8.1 64-bit has a user base of 0.15%. The majority of PC gamers, are using Windows 10 64 bit, it has a share of 53.45%. Windows 11 64 bit is catching up with an impressive 41.95% share.
Well, if you are among those who were using Windows 7 or 8 you have a few obvious options, you can upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows 11. You may not be able to do so for free, in which you will need to purchase a license from Microsoft.
Though Windows 10 is more popular, I recommend switching to Windows 11, but it has stricter hardware requirements. Windows 11 is just as good as Windows 10, plus some bloatware that you can disable for the most part. It is worth noting that Microsoft has planned to end support for Windows 10 in 2025, that's another reason why you may want to skip it, and jump directly to Windows 11.
Seriously, even if you are not using Steam, you should still move away from Windows 7 and 8, just to protect your data and online identities. The legacy operating systems are insecure, you should upgrade to a newer operating system that receives security updates regularly.
If your computer is too old and can't run Windows 10 or Windows 11, maybe you can take a look at a lightweight Linux distro like Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. You may want to check out ProtonDB to see if a game that you are interested in is available for Linux (also useful for Steam Deck).
Good riddance, Windows 7 & 8 are vastly inferior to Windows 10.
I continue to use Windows 7. I have stopped using new applications. There are no new features I want anyways. Everything was good in the past until it became subscription-based and bloated web-based garbage.
yep, dito kinda. most security problems are only relevant by lan attackers or local access, also if you disable all the not needed services the attackarea may no be that big. i woudnt use win7 in a public environment, but at home with nat, its safe enough. Biggest security holes are browsers, – scriptblockers help, running browsers in a vm or sandbox also helps. safe enough, also you dont leak data to ms like with 10 and 11 (unless you installed their last posioned patches).steam also continues to run if you configure it to not autoupdating.
Agree! Nothing broken or impossible, you can even add support for webp files to photo viewer, and some of this new stuff.
I was using Windows 10 yesterday on a lowly 15W laptop (it came with windows 10), and man, all the random shit it decides to do in the background is nasty. Windows updates made it sound like a jet engine. Disabling services is all you can do at that point.
Back in the day Windows tried hard to make things work on poor resources, now they don’t give a crap. 4 Gb of ram? spinning hdd? you, the end user is wrong.
@Ahswin
I’m more interested in the worldwide demographics. Who are these gamers still running windows 7?
My hypothesis, the poor, the oppressed, the “Have nots”.
A lot of people who want to play PC game can’t afford them let alone the modern hardware to play them on.
So they pirate them and run them on old hardware running windows 7 because they can pirate the os too.
Is it even possible to activate windows 7 officially now? Because there’s nothing wrong with “pirating the OS” if it’s the only option.
I activated windows 7 officially like 2 years ago? and it was a pain, not even an official option you can choose over the phone.
And thank you for rightfully pointing out one of the most downtrodden and oppressed groups of peoples, Windows 7 users! (repurposed joke about gamers).
that steamsurvey doesnt necessarilly reflect # of win7 users. win7 users most likely play gog games anyway.
the trend forcing ppl to 10 or 11 with the security argument is so ironic, b/c wheres my security when all my behavior data is send back to ms with 10 and 11?
for ppl who stillw ant to use steam on win 7, theres help:
a) create a file steam.cfg in steams root dir with this entry: BootStrapperInhibitAll=Enable
or
b) Go to the shortcut. open ‘target’ tab.
Add the following startup arguments after the path: -noverifyfiles -nobootstrapupdate -skipinitialbootstrap -norepairfiles -overridepackageurl
done
steam wont update to a browserversion that doesnt run on win7.
It is what it is… They could have ended it sooner, so it’s not like they necessarily wanted to, Chromium (which they chose to embed into their client out of convenience) tied their hands behind their back.
No hard feelings really, but to be honest, W7 users are probably in 2 categories: tech illiterates that don’t change things because they work (these guys are jumping ship by the day and have been for years, as things stop working properly, and then you have the stodgy kind that aren’t even big fans of having games linked to some sort of client.
I think since this was announced ages ago, people have made their peace with the news. I think the only noteworthy thing is how disappointing the reason is. Steam relies on chromium, and doesn’t even have any stripped back “bare essentials” versions of their client that they can officially recommend or support. That seems a bit odd to me? But I’m not a Steam user, just an outsider’s perspective. I tried TF2 some years ago and hated it, that was the only time I had Steam installed.
Or you could upgrade to GOG and leave the DRM and spyware infected platforms behind along with other legacy tech like SafeDisc.
Also I wouldn’t call Pop or Mint light. The are more middle or heavy compared to AntiX, Slitaz or Tiny Core.
lol