Steam to suspend Windows 7 and 8 support in 2024

Steam users will require a newer version of Windows to run the client

Marco Wutz | Mar 28, 2023

Steam to suspend Windows 7 and 8 support in 2024 /

Valve has announced that Steam would stop supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 as of January 1, 2024. “After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows,” the company stated.

Steam is the leading digital store and platform for PC games, making it almost essential to have for anyone playing on their computer. Since it receives more and more updates and features as time goes by, it relies on newer technologies to run properly, making it necessary for users to run modern operating systems.

“The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above,” Valve explained.

Previously, users could still download and play games through Steam even after the platform dropped its support for older versions of Windows, even though features like the store and the friend list didn’t work anymore. This was possible due to the login window and the Small Mode of the Steam library not running on Chromium.

However, even the login window for Steam is now based on Chromium, making it impossible to even access the client from an old OS not supported by it.

Microsoft itself ended active support for those versions of Windows in January 2023, so they are not receiving any more security updates – thus, switching to a modern edition is recommended in any case. In fact, most people using Steam have already done so anyway: Valve’s latest hardware survey revealed that only around 2% of people on the platform still used Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1.

Epic Games has dropped the support for these OS versions for Fortnite earlier this year as well, recommending players on Windows 7 and Windows 8 to use a cloud gaming service instead – their sun is truly setting.

Published Mar 28, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg