Valve has announced that Steam will no longer be supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems come 2024. While the news isn’t the most headlining for most Steam users, the ending support does affect an incredibly minuscule minority of users. According to Steam’s most recent Hardware and Software Survey from February 2023, it indicates 0.09% still use Windows 7 and 0.34% are still on Windows 8. While years pass and Windows 11 is still largely ignored by most — Windows 10 is preferred both by Steam users and generally PC users— there are still those on PC dedicated to Windows 7 and Windows 8. Even some have to rely on it for outdated software and hardware that can only work on those operating systems.
Valve says support ending for Windows 7 and Windows 8 is directly tied to what they refer to as, “an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows.” Come January 1, 2024, Steam will no longer function on both operating systems.
So while Steam becoming axed fully from Windows 7 and 8 won’t irk the general PC gaming population, it’s amongst a growing trend in updates only being supported on Windows 10 systems. Most recently Fornite announced it would no longer support Windows 7 and Windows 8 due to what they stated, “In older operating systems, the growing risk of security threats as well as the lack of modern features we rely on causes us to spend an increasing amount of development time on workarounds.” There’s also Sims 4 which no longer supports any new content on 32-bit systems.
Releasing way back in 2003, Steam started as a client for Valve’s own games to directly send updates to, it then became a distributor for third-party titles in 2005. Steam has grown increasingly popular in recent years, especially once the pandemic hit sending everyone to lockdown. Just earlier this year Steam hit 10 million concurrent users on January 7th, prior to that the record was 8.1 million on March 30th, 2020.