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Windows Games

Steam Will Require Windows 10 or Later Next Year (engadget.com) 100

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Valve announced today that Steam will require Windows 10 or later on January 1, 2024. The reason? Google Chrome. PC Gamer reports: "The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows," Valve's typically curt announcement reads. "In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above." January 1, 2024 is the day of doom for Steam on the old Windows versions. "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."
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Steam Will Require Windows 10 or Later Next Year More

Steam Will Require Windows 10 or Later Next Year

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  • Foreseen consequences: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @08:52PM (#63407610) Homepage

    Hundreds of formerly supported Windows games will suddenly, ironically, become only playable on Linux.

    • I was unaware that Windows 10 is a Linux distro...

    • Re:Foreseen consequences: (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @02:51AM (#63408030)

      According to the Steam hardware survey, the number of Windows 7 & 8 users (1.85% and dropping each month) only slightly exceeds the number of Linux users (1.27%). Most Windows gamers have long since abandoned those older versions by now. So best not to get your hopes up that this will cause any sort of Linux bump. If Windows 8 didn't drive people to Linux in droves, this sure as hell won't do it.

      • I'm fairly new to steam, but was proton around when windows 8 was released?

        • It was not. Wine was but it could not run as much as it can today.
          And the graphic drivers were a lot worse.

          Another thing that can be a big bump: when win 10 looses all support.

          • I don't think that will change much on its own, either. Windows 10 support is scheduled to end in 2025. By that point, Windows 12 will likely be out, and a lot of hardware refreshes will have happened making a transition to either 11 or 12 much smoother. I think a lot of the problems with Windows 11 have come from Microsoft trying to get rid of 30 years of cruft without breaking compatibility, and as 11 gets features back that were standard in 10, more users will migrate to it. A third of Steam users are on

            • Ah, the good old days when Windows 10 was the final release of Windows ever...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              While many people will still have fully capable notebooks and desktops, the fraction of users that do so will be smaller, with the rest using tablets or phones to do things either through web interfaces or, for heavier lifts, cloud sessions.

              Until they run out of cellular data for the month.

      • Re:Foreseen consequences: (Score:4, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @07:40AM (#63408356) Homepage Journal

        Ah, but if even a quarter of them went to Linux, it would be a massive percentage increase.

        IME most Windows games which don't have a lot of DRM BS in them now work somewhere between 90-120% as well on Linux as they do on Windows. The drivers for both nvidia and AMD are better on Linux (for some reason no distribution seems to install a recent enough nvidia driver for that to be true out of the box, weird) and the assorted 3d layers now available have really brought it to the next level. And Valve's Proton, and the variant Proton-GE have also made huge contributions. We now also have a decent audio server (pipewire) to go with the system.

        There is one thing preventing me from suggesting to noobs that they run Linux, though, and that's snap. Ubuntu is the only Linux I think a noob should run, but then I'd have to either teach them how to put real Firefox on their system, or do it for them, removing snap in the process. Snaps don't integrate worth crap, however else you feel about them.

        • Why not something like Mint or elementaryOS? Ubuntu-based but more newbie friendly and no need for Snaps.

          • +1 for Mint. It has a great diver manager to get the Nvidia proprietary drivers and you can include the media codecs during install. Plus, it has Flatpak already in the software manager making install a breeze.

          • Because if they do have a problem, there's far more help for Ubuntu than for any other distribution, and sometimes solutions have to be massaged to work even on Ubuntu variants.

      • This is good data, useful to Valve, but doesn't do anything to help those 1.85% of users.

        As an end-user, I'm extremely fed up with the concept of "SaaS." The one benefit it offers that I can think of is mobility, but that's rarely been something I've personally sought. The nefarious aspects of it are the ability of the company to push changes on end-users without their opt-in / choosing to "upgrade", end of product support = likely end of product existing, privacy implications, security implications (data l

        • As an end-user, I'm extremely fed up with the concept of "SaaS." The one benefit it offers that I can think of is mobility, but that's rarely been something I've personally sought. The nefarious aspects of it are the ability of the company to push changes on end-users without their opt-in / choosing to "upgrade", end of product support = likely end of product existing, privacy implications, security implications (data leaks and breaches etc.) and accessibility + data consistency issues in the face of intermittent network connectivity.

          Unfortunately, we are in an extremely small minority. Most people are happy to take what they're given. They willingly give up their rights to choose and to say "no", in exchange for convenience and for not having to understand things they aren't inherently interested in.

        • They should just allow Steam to not be updated, same as not updating Windows 7, just make it clear that support will stop. Let the 1.85% run outdated systems and software if they want, it harms no one else. (ok, potential malware, but it's not Valve's job to police that)

        • I'm not sure they need "help". Those 1.85% of users are transitioning on their own. Those OSes dropped by -0.24% since last month. By the end of the year, it's going to be damn close to zero, even without the imposed cutoff. Gamers tend to enjoy playing new games, and new games are increasingly likely to require Windows 10 or better. There's more of an incentive to stay current than for non-gamers, I suppose, whose software from ten or fifteen years ago (or more) might still be perfectly adequate for t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by G00F ( 241765 )

        Didnt think that windows 7 was that small, but of course, most windows 7 people would chose to not be included in the survey they ask permission to run against your pc....

    • The real irony is that they'll only be playable on a mangled Linux box. The feature request for 64-bit Linux support [github.com] has been open for eight and a half years, so you can't just install the latest and best.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        I don't understand how 32-bit games in a subscriber's Steam library could run under a 64-bit-only Linux system. This includes, for example, games published before the 64-bit transition whose publisher has since gone out of business. I'm interested in how you would justify the time and money of maintaining 32-bit and 64-bit clients in parallel only for users of the 64-bit client to see half their library marked as unplayable.

        • I don't understand how 32-bit games in a subscriber's Steam library could run under a 64-bit-only Linux system.

          If the kernel was compiled to not run 32 bit binaries, you will need a new kernel. Otherwise, you only need some libraries. Or you could use kvm, although the graphics performance isn't there unless you use GPU passthrough.

    • ...I agree I had a few games I kept a windows 7 install around for as they would not run on Proton - now they all do ...

  • Lite client? (Score:3)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:03PM (#63407624)

    Can't they offer a lite version of the client that is just a game launcher without the embedded browser/social stuff?

    • Re:Lite client? (Score:4, Informative)

      by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:07PM (#63407628) Homepage

      The main issue is the "store" tab is browser based.

      I totally agree, use a separate system to purchase, and a lite launcher to just run stuff.

      But then people would be more likely to PLAY games than BUY games!

      • Re:Lite client? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @10:14PM (#63407716) Homepage

        If only Chrome could be open source ...

        Oh, wait: https://github.com/chromium/ch... [github.com]

        • I'm not sure what you're proposing here:

          a) Embed old Chromium in place and freeze the version leaving you open to new security nightmares?
          b) Put in considerable effort to back port security fixes in Chromium for the sake of 1% of your users?
          c) That you don't realise Chromium is precisely what is no longer being supported on Windows 7 which is incidentally also one of the reasons browsers like Vivaldi are also dropping support for Windows 7?

          • What security nightmares? The Store page is hosted by Valve, the company that also makes the Steam client. It is not used to browse random sites, at least I don't think so (I have never tried).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by darkain ( 749283 )

          So I guess you're volunteering to maintain Windows 7 backwards compatibility then?

    • And how are they supposed to push their sales and ads onto their users? C'mon, man, focus on the important parts.

    • Re:Lite client? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by codebase7 ( 9682010 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @05:32AM (#63408158)
      They should be able to. I remember reading [pcgamesn.com] something about Valve claiming that [reddit.com] if Steam was shuttered, they'd keep the games playable. [imgur.com] Considering that for these older versions of Windows, Steam will effectively be shuttered, I'd say it's time to put that promise to the test.

      To keep a minimal DRM client functional on older versions of Windows, or to release offline patches for the games that they can run? The ball is in your court Valve....

      • Considering that for these older versions of Windows, Steam will effectively be shuttered, I'd say it's time to put that promise to the test.

        That's not the promise. Steam isn't being shuttered and is still fully available and supported. The fact of the matter is Steam has always run on specific software platforms. It was never a free standing program running on bare metal to do with as you please. The games are still available to players, as is a steam download for their supported systems.

        I get it, sucks to be the 1% affected by this, but the reality is they aren't going back on their promise, not without you jumping through some circus level lo

        • Keeping the product you already payed for working is impossible without you jumping through some circus level logic hoops.

          FTFY.

          So, I'm the one who must constantly jump through hoops to keep something that is working as of this post, working in the future because some company decided to hit a remote kill switch. That's a great product lifecycle now isn't it? We should expand this to everything! 10 years from now, your car will stop dead in the road because it's no longer able to contact the activation server! 10 years from now your house is repossessed by the government because it's no longer receiving security updates from

      • Valve didn't promise this, though an employee suggested it. I don't think they can be legally bound by what one customer support person said.

        • It wouldn't happen anyway. Remember when Notch said that when he was done with it, he'd open source Minecraft?

          • It's not like Microsoft hasn't ever open sourced a previously proprietary game of theirs now is it? Oh, wait they have. [slashdot.org] Perhaps, you should ask Microsoft if they would open source it. (Of course, that will probably only happen once Minecraft is a dead product, so maybe in 5 - 10 years? Hell, It might be sooner if Microsoft keeps F'ing it up.....)

            • That wasn't a game, and they didn't open source it until decades after it was abandoned...

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tepples ( 727027 )

                Id Software, a company now owned by Microsoft, released the video game Doom as free software, though the non-program parts of the game (those parts contained in the WAD file) remained proprietary.

                • Id is not Microsoft, and neither is Valve. In any case, it's more likely for Valve to be bought out or go bankrupt than to close their doors peacefully, and in neither situation will they be giving away any DRM removal patches.

  • End of future retro gaming (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:17PM (#63407640)
    As also seen with Nintendo closing the 3DS shop, only devices with sufficient physical media will be ever considered viable for retro gaming. You can still play Atari games almost 50 years later, try doing that with Steam games.

    • Easy. Linux.

    • Actually anything that you bought off of the 3DS / WiiU eshop is permanently playable. As none of it requires phoning home, nor even the wifi to be enabled, for it to be run by the console. (Though a small number of games like Nintendo Badge Arcade do require a live server to play once it's up and running. The vast majority of them don't.) Unlike Steam games which do* require phoning home for them to run.


      *: Steam has an offline mode, but it must be activated with the games you want to run fully installed
      • Steam DRM is wholly optional. Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are DRM-free and can be run without the Steam client.
    • My Steam account is nearly 20 years old...

    • You can still play Atari games almost 50 years later, try doing that with Steam games.

      Literally the first game ever released on Steam still works fine in Windows 11 on the most recent Steam client.

      This isn't the end of retro gaming. No games will stop functioning as a result of this.

  • Compatibility layer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:23PM (#63407648) Homepage

    What specific features is Chromium using that aren't present on Windows 7?

    It just might be something that can be emulated via a compatibility layer. Windows 98 got "KernelEx" which added some missing functions into Kernel32.dll (a user-mode library), letting some newer software run.

    • ^^ Mod parent +1

      Looks like Google dropped support for Win 7, 8, and Server 2012, with the public release of Chrome 110 on February 7th. I guess that would be a place to start.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Chrome has been broken on older versions of Windows for many, many years. For example, on Windows 8.1 if you try to export certain data, like saved logins, it will often crash Chrome so hard that Chrome's built in crash handler dies with it.

      You can't reasonably expect a company offering a free product to expend engineering resources on supporting a deprecated version of Windows, especially when it's a web browser that is forced to rely on the underlying OS for some security features which are no longer main

    • What specific features is Chromium using that aren't present on Windows 7?

      Developers.

      The issue isn't specific features, it's that when developing bugs arise and those bugs need to be fixed. The question eventually gets asked, how much effort do you put in to support a platform that is used by fuckall% of your userbase.

      Developers are on the record as saying that none of the program, build, or debug on Windows 7 machines. Heck check the bug tracker and you'll find specific discussion about Chromium not even being buildable on Windows 7 anymore and developers basically saying they a

      • There's a difference between stopping support for old versions and adding extra time and code to make the old versions stop working on a certain date.

  • Or better (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `oarigogirdor'> on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @10:06PM (#63407704) Homepage

    Recycling an old joke: "It says Windows 10 or better, so it supports Linux!"

  • There it is, the push I needed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @10:52PM (#63407774)
    The only reason I still run Windows 7 is to play the games I purchased on Steam over the years. I have not purchased a game on Steam in a very long time now because I refuse to use Windows past version 7 and knew this day would eventually come. This is the push I needed to go all Linux. Thank you Steam for weaning me off the last bit that M$ still had me holding on to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by G00F ( 241765 )

      yea there is no way I'll go the crap way and get windows 10/11, but now steam basically taking away what one buys because they made the DRM windows 10 only is complete crap.

      And not all games have linux ports, or play nice under it.

    • Re:There it is, the push I needed (Score:4, Informative)

      by JThundley ( 631154 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @01:07AM (#63407934)

      I was on Windows 7 for gaming just like you. 3 weeks ago I built a new computer and only installed Linux. I gotta say, gaming is better and easier than I thought it would be! Don't be scared, take the plunge!

      • Finally, this is the year of the Linux desktop!

      • I gotta say, gaming is better and easier than I thought it would be!

        You must have thought it was stupidly hard because gaming on Linux is nowhere near as easy as it is for gaming on windows. For example, Counter Strike is hanging on "loading resources" for about 3 minutes every time a map is loaded (which means no online play). DoTA loses 20% or more performance. Portal and Portal 2 are glitchy and very not smooth. Non-Valve games such as Civilization V crash after 50 turns unless you limit the number of CPU cores to 8 or fewer. Elite Dangerous will not launch.

        Look man, I c

        • I don't know man, I installed the Blizzard launcher in Steam and now I play Starcraft 2 without issues (except for mouse-locking but honestly that happened to me in Windows too). I haven't come across a Windows game that doesn't run yet, but admittedly I haven't tried a ton. I can't help but think your issues are specific to your setup and can be fixed, I don't think everyone has that same experience. I wish you luck and hope you do improve your situation.

          Elite Dangerous sucks shit and you're better off wit

    • The only reason I still run Windows 7 is to play the games I purchased on Steam over the years. I have not purchased a game on Steam in a very long time now because I refuse to use Windows past version 7 and knew this day would eventually come. This is the push I needed to go all Linux. Thank you Steam for weaning me off the last bit that M$ still had me holding on to.

      You won't regret it, but choose a distro wisely for the least pain.
      I highly recommend dual booting initially - that way, you can copy your steam library and _usually_ steam will pick up on the copied data and just verify it, rather than downloading everything again.

      My experience, after about 18 months now, is that the vast majority of Steam titles run without a hitch - possibly over 90%.
      Non-steam games? - your mileage will vary dramatically.
      There's apps like Lutris that can work, but Lutris can also be a co

    • I HATE windows UIs past 7 as well - honestly I loved Windows 2000 / NT4 UI and frankly would happily use them today if they were supported...

      Anyway, the way I manage to function with 8 and up through 10 is OpenShell

      With win 11, I also need StartAllBack to fix the taskbar and a couple windows 11 annoyances (Basically OpenShell now just for the start menu and StartAllBack for the rest

      but I totally get it - I'm on the autism spectrum and things that mess with how my UI works become so distracting to me that I

  • Thanks, Valve (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @02:42AM (#63408022)

    Funny how you will no longer be able to run native games because their launcher is a web browser.

    It's not like they could, you know, separate the launcher from the store.

    • Indeed -
      There IS a choice... like they could go with FireFox...
      They could go with whatever the computers default browser is set to, though I do get that unsupported windows without security fixes could present a nightmare for them in terms of hacked/stolen accounts...

      I wish they had a way to let these older games that just won't run past 7 or xp still run/work

      Maybe make ClassicSteam to let those games that just won't work on modern OS/hardware still run/work?

      I dunno.

    • What's worse, the embedded webshit is the worst thing about Steam. It eats a lot of ram and the performance of the embedded browser is terrible for some reason. It should never have been in there, it would always have made more sense just to load browser content in the user's browser.

  • Will it affect the packaged versions? (Score:3)

    by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @03:30AM (#63408060) Journal

    You know, the highly compressed ones made by enthusiasts and which work perfectly fine on a permanently disconnected Windows (7) machine (in seperate sandboxie instances).

    It's a good thing I see little appeal in modern games because I like to own a physical copy of the games I like. Needs subscription or internet connection? No. Bugger off.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by txyoji ( 5037063 )
      The appeal was to never have to patch a game again. Getting a lan party together; everyone spent the couple of hours installing and getting on the same patched version of things. As I was often the tech support; it was a PITA. I can't think of a packaged AAA game that I've bought that didn't have some bug that made playing frustrating without downloading patches.

    • Many games will run w/o the launcher. And those that need the launcher might not necessarily need all of it.

      I'm still unsure if this announcement means that Steam stops working altogether, or if it just means no more updates or support.

  • 3 letters (Score:3)

    by nicubunu ( 242346 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @04:25AM (#63408102) Homepage

    I have a 3 letter answer for this: G O G.

    Ok, I have one more: T P B.

  • The Law of Intended Consequences rears its head.
  • It;s of academic interest - when I did install Stream on my Linux box, almost nothing worked. Not sure if it was inadequate general hardware, or inadequate graphic card - I forget which - but I deleted it after a couple of days of failing to get anything interesting to download.

    Has it got worse since then? That was about 3 or 4 years ago.

    • It has gotten orders of magnitude better since then, not worse, mostly due to valve's increased interest in linux for their steam deck. It runs their own wine fork, proton, https://github.com/ValveSoftwa... [github.com]. With that the vast majority of games on steam run just fine on linux (barring ones with kernel based DRM)

      • Close to enthusiasm-making.

        I've done my French exercises for the evening, and I've only a few telly and radio programmes to D/L, so I'll maybe have another look this evening.

  • I was concerned about OS X and linux support, until I read the actual notice. Most old pre-Windows 10 games running on Steam don't have "DRM". They should be able to run those games without a Steam interface (or use with an old Steam client "offline"). The only consequence for "those" games will be the separation of those game players from the Steam "community".

    It strikes me as warranting a "get a life" response.

  • Instead of relying on google (as a prime example of a monoculture), they could try one or more different browsers?

    Relying on 1 browser, especially Google, seems bad. Sure makes Steam rather dependent on Google -- and not for the execution of the base games!

    Maybe Firefox, Palemoon, Opera, or anything other than Chrome. I thought software monocultures were bad (more prone to failure, easier to exploit, etc), no?

    • If you're going to build your product around a browser it doesn't matter which browser you pick, it'll be a "monoculture" for your toolchain. Unless you want to divide your development resources to support multiple browsers simultaneously which seems even more silly. "We better do 2x or 3x the work, just in case some day we have to do the work."

    • What they need to do is just support standards and not embed any browser.

      There is no user benefit to having a browser inside of Steam, and there is a substantial drawback, memory consumption. The user probably already has a browser running, they should use it, and they should never have embedded a browser in the first place. It was a bad decision that led to additional work.

  • The fam and I are on Win10 for gaming at the moment, but there's no way I'm installing anything newer than Win10 in my house. I already have to arduously disable all the data harvesting in Win10 every time I install it... and every time I hear about a "new AI feature" going into MS's next version of Windows and Office all I can do is groan. How do you convince your fam?

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