Steam officially drops support for Windows 7 and Windows 8

Steam has officially stopped supporting Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7. Effective from January 1, 2024, the users running the client on these operating systems won't receive any updates and security patches. Moreover, Valve won't be offering any support for the technical issues raised by the users on the mentioned operating systems.

Valve says that the Steam games and the client are expected to continue running on these older operating systems for some time. However, there's no guarantee that the games and client will be fully functional after the mentioned date. To ensure continued operation, Valve asked users to update their PCs to a newer version of Windows.

For those wondering why Steam won't suddenly support these operating systems, Valve says it's for the client relying on the embedded Google Chrome browser. Chrome has also dropped support for the old operating systems, which means the web shell of the client won't run normally on PCs running them.

These decisions align with Microsoft's support for the operating systems. In case you're unaware, Microsoft has ended support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. As for Windows 8.1, starting from January 10, 2023, users running the OS will no longer get any updates or technical help.

Getting back to Steam, Valve's official Hardware & Software Survey from December 2023 shows that only 0.06% of the users are on Windows 7, and 0.15% are on Windows 8.1. To compare, 53.45% of users are on Windows 10, and 41.95% are on Windows 11. So, only a few users will be affected by this decision.

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