On January 1, Valve ended support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. This means that users of these older versions of Microsoft's OS will eventually no longer be able to use the gaming platform; in a post on the Steam support site, Valve said, "Steam clients and games on these older OSes , expected to continue to work without updates for some time after January 1, 2024, but we cannot guarantee continued functionality beyond that date."

It is a bit wild to say that Steam supported Windows 7 until early 2024; even after Windows 8 was released, Windows 7 was still a very popular OS version, but it debuted in 2009, which is a very In terms of software years, it has been around for a very long time. To put this in perspective, when Steam debuted in 2003, it needed to support Windows 2.1 with the same backward compatibility. Windows is clearly more mature these days, but Windows 7 is still a hell of a lot better.

Microsoft's extended support for Windows 7 for businesses ended in January 2023 (support for the regular version ends in 2020), and according to Valve, "Steam's core functionality depends on the built-in version of Google Chrome, and older versions of Windows," and they are making this change because "it no longer works on Windows. Future updates to Steam will require a security update for Windows 10/11.

"We strongly encourage all Windows 7/8/8.1 users to update as soon as possible. Computers running these operating systems are susceptible to new unpatched malware and other exploits when connected to the Internet. Such malware can cause PC, Steam, and game performance to slow down or crash. This malware can also be used to steal credentials for Steam accounts and other services.

After all, Valve is speaking to a small fraction of the overall Steam user base here: according to a December 2023 hardware survey, 0.15% of Steam users are currently using Windows 8.1, and 0.06% continue to use Windows 7 are still using Windows 8.1 and only 0.06% continue to use Windows 7. Still, with 132 million monthly active users in 2021, there are likely hundreds of thousands of gamers still using older Windows machines. But with rumors of Windows 12, there is a new excuse to put it off a bit longer.