Steam support for Windows XP and Vista discontinued from today

Valve has announced that it will no longer support the use of the Steam platform on either Windows XP or Windows Vista. This decision comes into effect today (January 1, 2019), and has been made in response to findings that the majority of Steam users use other operating systems. It is estimated that less than 1% of them use either Vista or XP.

The company has also let it be known that Steam now requires an embedded form of Chrome that is not compatible with either legacy OS. In addition, it claims that the platform requires security and functionality that is only found in Windows 7 or above. Therefore, the Steam client will no longer run on versions older than them.

Valve has given users on XP and Vista a 'grace period' that encompassed all of 2018 in which they still had access to gameplay, but no additional features, on Steam. However, this level of access is also now denied to these individuals. The company has noted that the only way for them to regain access to Steam is to upgrade to a newer version of Windows this year.

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