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Games IT

Steam Has Stopped Supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 (theverge.com) 169

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
Steam: As of January 1 2024, Steam has officially stopped supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

In order to ensure continued operation of Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users should update to a more recent version of Windows. We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024, but we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date. The Verge adds: 95.57 percent of surveyed Steam users are already on Windows 10 and 11, with nearly 2 percent of the remainder on Linux and 1.5 percent on Mac -- so we may be talking about fewer than 1 percent of users on these older Windows builds. Older versions of MacOS will also lose support on February 15th, just a month and a half from now.
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Steam Has Stopped Supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 More

Steam Has Stopped Supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1

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  • Use Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @03:19AM (#64123683) Homepage

    Use Linux :)

    • Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @03:45AM (#64123715)

      I just tried for the millionth time. Accessibility support was nonexistent, but my main problem was I couldn't get the installation media to even boot for Manjaro. I used Rufus to write the only image they provided, it insisted on DD mode, and on boot it does nothing. Does no one test anything in Linux desktop land?

      • Well, not the Manjaro maintainers, anyway, but they're widely known for that. You could have easily picked a distro with a better rep and had less problems.

      • I just tried for the millionth time. Accessibility support was nonexistent

        Accessibility support was borderline non-existent on Windows 7 as well. If you cared about accessibility you wouldn't be affected by this announcement.
        Fun fact though, there are more people running Steam on Manjaro than there are Windows 7 (32bit).

        But in any case, you need to check your BIOS settings. Most devices are not shipped to boot from USB automatically anymore, or if they are they prevent unauthorised booting. You may need to disable secure boot to complete the installation, and then re-enable it an

        • 7 had plenty of accessibility support, especially high contrast dark.

          • 7 had plenty of accessibility support, especially high contrast dark.

            And it pales in comparison to what is available now. High contrast dark has existed since Windows 3.11 yet I don't recommend people who require accessibility use that OS.

            • I've never found anything equivalent on Linux, unfortunately. It not only uses pure black backgrounds in dialogs and such, but it tells apps to go the extra mile, change things they wouldn't normally change. But it's not just visuals, it's the narrator, too.

              Even while installing Windows, the colors are muted down and much less bright than what I see in Linux installers. And much larger fonts are used, everywhere. I literally had a magnifying glass, straining through so much pain to see more while blocki

        • Accessibility support was borderline non-existent on Windows 7 as well
           
          You are absolutely full of shit

          • Not at all. If you compare accessibility improvements between OSes you'll find Windows 7 is (this will shock you) a decade behind. It barely meets the minimum expectations for someone who needs it these days.

            Please get a clue.

            • Windows 7 is well over a decade old. But it at least had high contrast and several other features for people who can't move so easily. And it had DPI scaling, per-monitor. Linux is still lacking any accessibility considerations for most distros.

              Anyway, it was by far the best looking OS of any on any platform, ever. Of COURSE they replaced it with another Fisher Price looking POS.

      • Try running Linux on new architectures like RISCV it’s a blast. Nothing like having your shell segfault locking you out of the machine. Or trying to update and the http component of apt produces a signal 4 error. Or finding conflicting information about the same issue from the same distribution website.

    • Some games do not work as well on Linux (or not at all). Some anti-cheat software does not like Linux, but I have not encountered that problem myself (because I don't really play competitive multiplayer games).

      Another problem is performance and I have encountered it. Specifically, with the game Derail Valley. Now, my game PC is not super powerful (Ryzen 7 3800X, GTX970), but it can run the game on Windows 8.1 pretty well. The framerate is not super high, but high enough (minimum I saw was 28FPS or something

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Just curious are you using Nvidia proprietary drivers for your GTX970 on Linux? I think you should if you want to make any fair comparison with Windows. Linux will use nouveau open-source driver by default for Nvidia card. You need to disable nouveau and install Nvidia proprietary drivers to make a fair comparison with Windows with regards to the performance of GTX970 on Linux.

        • Yes, I use the proprietary driver, I didn't even try the open-source one, since I read online that it is worse than the one I can get from nVidia (I also used the proprietary driver for mining).

      • Another problem is performance and I have encountered it.

        IME performance is often better on Linux, compatibility is the most serious problem. With that said,

        Specifically, with the game Derail Valley

        Disable esync [protondb.com] and most problems are reported to go away. You may also have to disable shadows. Seems like the developer did something weird with throttling that doesn't work well on Linux, they are probably using some really dumb method to gauge system load.

        My laptop has much weaker hardware (GT840M), so games that run OK on Windows 7 probably would not at all on Linux.

        Older games are more likely to work well, not less, because people have figured out workarounds for developer "cleverness" that wound up actually being s

        • Thanks for the suggestion. I think I tried that before and it didn't help. Now it seems to have helped once, so I have to figure out how to repeat it.

          I start up the game, its 15FPS in window mode, switch to fullscreen and now it's 8FPS. Change resolution from 1920x1200 to 1280x800 and FPS goes up to 50, yay! Even with the graphics settings in high, it seems to work. I lowered the graphics settings to low, FPS stayed about the same. Switch resolution back to 1920x1200 - FPS is at about 40. Exit the game, sta

    • Unfortunately, there are entire genres of games that don't work on Linux, mostly because of anticheat.

      None of the popular battle royale games work in Proton, and in fact won't even run in a Windows install inside VMware. (PUBG and Fortnite are a complete no-go.)

      Other than that I've been able to get most games working with more or less faffing about although sometimes there are completely baffling issues I could certainly understand people not wanting to deal with.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by codebase7 ( 9682010 )

        anticheat

        Ah, yes. The "we want to rootkit your computer so we don't have to code our game worth shit" solution.

        FYI: That will never work properly under Linux. The entire point of what passes for "anticheat" these days is that you are forbidden from seeing sections of your own memory that the developers / publishers dictate. I.e. The whole point is "security" through enforced obscurity. Linux is fundamentally incompatible with such an approach because Linux is OSS. I.e. You can see the code running and alter it if

        • Itâ(TM)s not a matter of fooling anyone, you dingdong. Itâ(TM)s simply about crating a fair gaming environment. Jesus, zealots are so deliberately obtuse.

          • It's an endless arms race with developers of wallhacks, aimbots and other cheating tools. Linux support should not be sacrificed in order to continue this windmill fight. It only gives more income to cheat developers, hurts linux adoption and excludes linux users from the games' community.

    • Seeing how great that works on the Steamdeck, this really is the answer if you're using Steam a lot.

    • Use Linux :)

      You joke but there are 3x as many Linux gamers than there are Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 combined.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        Considering just how old and (in Win7's case) sadly outdated those are, I'm not sure this is the praise you were aiming for.

    • I am actually surprise that Steam games works.
      Sure, I usually start by playing very old games and move up the versions.

      I only play games once (sometime twice) a year. Like Holidays.
      I run Slackware, which I guess is not the most user-friendly ...

      But it's been a breeze. On BioShock 2 now (because of the sale).
      Played BioShock 1. Gothic 3. Wanted to try out GTA 5.
      Sales mean games are as cheap as £2.

    • I've been using and maintaining the same Debian install since I was in high school, just carefully moving it from machine to machine for the last 25 years. It runs Steam, it runs my Steam games just fine. We all love Debian here.

    • I use steam for the games. Because I want to play the games. Maybe 1 in 10 of the games I've bought work on Linux.

      Don't get me wrong. Linux is at the heart of my professional life and it runs on nearly all of my personal servers. But when I want to play games, I'm not going to pick games for my system, I'm going to pick my system for the games.

  • 14 years till "Windows 11 was the best" (Score:3, Funny)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @04:22AM (#64123751)
    "Can you believe Windows 16 ONLY runs in your brain! I can't believe this end of support, I'm switching to Linux!"

  • Just because the Steam client is based on an embedded version of the google chrome spyware that stopped supporting windoze versions 10.

    • Sorry but no. The Steam client only uses Google's rendering engine to render the store page. Underneath it is a huge behemoth 6x larger than Chrome itself. Launch Steam in big picture mode and Chrome isn't used at all. That's before you get into details such as fundamental gaming APIs such as SteamVR or Steam Input, or consider the fact they have in house provided DRM for some games, or that they provide support for games which have external DRM that has dropped support for Windows 7 including several AAA t

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        You sound very opinionated, and also very wrong. Steam themselves specifically cited chromium project dropping win 7 support as their reason for doing the same when decision was announced back in mid 2023.

        "But the addons are big in size because they contain a lot of assets". Ok. It's still chromium, and the reason they have problems supporting win 7 is chromium removing relevant code that is needed for it to run on 7.

        It's not like there was any meaningful cost to supporting 7 either. You remind me of the sc

        • Steam themselves specifically cited chromium project dropping win 7 support as their reason for doing the same when decision was announced back in mid 2023.

          Steam themselves used the excuse. Excuses and reasons are not the same thing. It actively costs money to support other clients. Steam could fork Chromium and continue to support Windows 7 but they don't. Think about that for a moment.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            That would be because relevant code has been removed, and you'd have to hunt down the exact changes from almost a year ago and revert them. You're still in the "fuck you, remove the code that works fine" world.

            Leave Britney alone.

      • At some point you as both a programmer and a provider of a platform for gaming need to consider no longer supporting OSs which are over a decade old and which your own telemetry indicates together all up are used by less than 1% of your user base, and which you cannot guarantee the software you provide works on.

        Programming is fundamentally about managing complexity. If developers can't even structure their code in ways that support different versions of the same operating system let alone radically different ones that's a reflection of their own poor design, planning and indicates a profound lack of discipline.

        For most sane developers millions of users is worth the trivial maintenance costs of what is basically just a website that sells and launches games.

        Underneath it is a huge behemoth 6x larger than Chrome itself.

        Chrome is at least 15 MLOC so this means steam is 15 * 6 =

        • I'm struggling to understand how supporting million(s) of users constitutes an "edge case" or the level of incompetent design that would enable such a thing to ring true on a mature operating system that bends over backwards to maintain compatibility.

          I'm struggling to understand why you don't understand that these games work now and will continue to work once Steam makes the change. Steam will not ensure they work in the future on operating systems that the OS maker (Microsoft) has stopped supporting. In the case of Windows 7, the last version was 12 years ago. For Windows 8, the last version was 7 years ago. Windows 8.1 last version was January 2023.

          • I'm struggling to understand why you don't understand that these games work now and will continue to work once Steam makes the change.

            It is not clear where you got that impression. My entire understanding of this situation can be found in the headline "After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions."

            Re-reading my

            • Re-reading my own statement I don't see where I either stated, suggested or implied either games or steam itself would stop working. Only they would stop supporting their shit so anyone who had a problem with steam on these platforms from that point forward I assume would be fucked.

              Again, do you understand that the games will continue to work? Because your statement seems to ignore that if the games are still working, they do not need support.

    • Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 are out of service. I am sympathetic as far as Windows 10 and 11 having a lot of problems but that's not an adequate reason to use an OS that isn't getting updates anymore; either switch to Linux, which works with Steam fairly well these days, or do what I do and use a combination of the local group policy editor and third party utilities to make modern Windows usable.

      I don't like the forced CEF push either (there's no reason it couldn't be optional, 95% of what I use Steam for used

      • These are games. With DRM. The games aren't all getting updates to work on newer operating systems. But the DRM is leaving the games behind. Gaming can happen on a dedicated partition or even dedicated hardware. Steam is probably still selling these games while also not supporting installing them on the platforms they actually run on.

        So much for buying a game once and owning it for as long as the service exists. For some of these games, you really no longer effectively have a license anymore.

        • That's a different problem than what TFS is talking about. What TFS is about specifically is that Valve is dropping support for older OSes for the Steam client specifically. This is happening because Steam has CEF integrated and Chromium and CEF no longer support those OSes.

          Developers failing to provide modernization updates to their game while still selling them is a completely different problem. Steamworks (which not all games use) is Valve's DRM solution and that works fine on Windows 10 or 11 if devs

          • The games don't need to support a newer OS. And depending on the issues it would be cost prohibitive. The game is still good and worth buying.

        • Steam is probably still selling these games while also not supporting installing them on the platforms they actually run on.

          Um, what? The change: Steam will no longer support these operating systems that the manufacturer no longer supports. Steam will continue to support the games but not on those OS versions. Update the OS and the Steam client and the games will continue to work. If people do not want to update their OS, the games will continue to work offline (unless it is an online game then it is up to the game developer's online services).

          • If people do not want to update their OS, the games will continue to work offline

            As long as hardware never fails and the OS or game never need reinstalled. If you have a dedicated retro gaming PC to run these Windows 7 only games on, the DRM is broken permanently for those games.

      • When I used Windows 10 (7 or 8 would not work properly on that device), I used it like it was out-of-support too, but disabling all updates, because I did not want the possibility of an update reverting some of the anti-spyware settings to the default spyware mode. Honestly, I think the updates thing is overrated, probably more updates do something bad (forcing to install Windows 11, adding spyware etc) than fix what is broken, actually affects me and cannot be worked around.

        It's not like I update Linux tha

  • Affects less than 1% of Steam's users (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aryeh Goretsky ( 129230 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @06:50AM (#64123911) Homepage

    Hello,

    Here are the usage states for the deprecated versions of Windows, according to the Valve Corporations November 2023 Steam Hardware Survey at https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]:

    Windows 7 64 bit - 0.69%
    Windows 8.1 64 bit - 0.16%
    Windows 7 0.06%

    So, according to Valve's own data, this accounts for just under 1% (0.91% to be exact) of all use.

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky

    • And, it should be noted, it only affects that less than 1% of users sometime in the future, for now, on Jan 2, 2024, and into the foreseeable future, Steam will run just fine on Win 7/8/8.1...

    • So, according to Valve's own data, this accounts for just under 1% (0.91% to be exact) of all use.

      Which is a little less than half of Linux use (1.97%) and a little over half of all OS X use (1.63%).

  • ... 95.57 percent of surveyed Steam users are already on Windows 10 and 11 ...

    I've seen the Steam client out-of-the-box (figuratively speaking) refuse to work on Windows 10. There's obviously spyware that is easily damaged by other software/hardware.

  • Steam is good, but in some ways as bad as any thing that controls the market i.e. gaming market. A lot of us still wish for the play offline mode, download version because you can play it as long as you own a computer that can run it ! The Bad & Ugly is when support is dropped and you can no longer play what you PAID for !!! And it's NOT just Steam !! I can no longer download Diablo 1 from Blizzard even though I paid for it and own a license for it as 1 example !!
    • Things got off topic when posters said use Linux. I have never found a good reason to want to try it. I don't want to twiddle with an OS to get it to run. For the Linux users who will want to burn me lololol, how many of your parents, brothers, sisters, family, friends, etc use it ????

      • Things got off topic when posters said use Linux. I have never found a good reason to want to try it. I don't want to twiddle with an OS to get it to run.

        Linux: You have to twiddle it to get it to do things it doesn't do when you install it
        Windows: You have to twiddle it to get it to stop doing things you didn't want it to do in the first place when you installed it

        Your argument is disingenuous.

        For the Linux users who will want to burn me lololol, how many of your parents, brothers, sisters, family, friends, etc use it ????

        Argumentam ad populam is a logical fallacy. You are not only not up to date, you are literally thousands of years out of date. Join us in the present, where we are thinking about the future.

      • It's only very new users to Linux that "burns" other people.
        Mature or experienced users can't care less what you do.
        Some may pity you. That's all.

        I mean fancy an OS that can claim all your personal files as theirs while you're still paying for it.
        Read that somewhere, maybe it's not the entire picture, who knows .....

        Popularity doesn't always mean something is good, just ever so profitable for the parent company and extremely well marketed.

  • What? (Score:2)

    by kenh ( 9056 )

    The Verge adds: 95.57 percent of surveyed Steam users are already on Windows 10 and 11, with nearly 2 percent of the remainder on Linux and 1.5 percent on Mac -- so we may be talking about fewer than 1 percent of users on these older Windows builds. Older versions of MacOS will also lose support on February 15th, just a month and a half from now.

    95.57% of users are on a supported version of Windows, got it, but what the hell does "nearly 2% of the remainder on Linux" mean? As written it says "nearly 2%" of the 4.43% of users not running Windows are on Linux? I don't think the author meant ""2% of remainder" I think they simply meant "2%" 2% of those surveyed is vastly different from 2% of the remaining 4.43%.

    Yes I'm not-picking, but hello! this is Slashdot...

  • That they made Proton to get away from Microsoft, but still are using Google for client.

  • Windows 10 and 11 are trivially easy to obtain legally or otherwise and run on some ancient junk like my T61s.

    Supporting ewaste may be noble but it's also a burden.

  • Joke's on them, because I don't support Steam, and I don't gaf.

  • I got a warning saying Steam will refuse to launch on my old apple Macbook after Feb 15th. Apple stopped publishing patches for the OS version my macbook can support, and newer OSes refuse to install on this laptop, so that's the end of using Steam on this still-useful machine.

  • The Question is What You PAID for. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZZZaphod ( 543839 ) on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @04:09PM (#64125509)
    I entered in to a contract to purchase a game, to run on a machine. There were no 'time terms' in my contract. The contract simply says, I wont steal the game, and steam will let me run the game. Valve Co, is not allowed to change those terms. This is simple. The fact that is a computer doesn't make it any different. This is a simple as I know how to put it today..... 1. 2016 I sell you a pair of wired headphones. 2. Today I send a update that changes the plug on the headphones. 3. I tell you you should have bought a new stereo, because security. 4. In January 2024, you will either let me put the new plug on your headphones or I break them. ----------- the fact that its OS's and Computers and all those fancy things doesn't change how human agreements work. Valve wants it to. Microsoft and Apple and Google want it to. They have a profit motive that would have them do anything physically possible to amass more money.

    • I entered in to a contract to purchase a game, to run on a machine. There were no 'time terms' in my contract.

      The only thing you did, was enter into a contract you didn't read. In fact your contract specifically gives valve the right to cease providing subscription and content at their discretion.

      The contract simply says, I wont steal the game, and steam will let me run the game.

      Nope. The contract is 12 clauses covering some 40 pages with a rider that says you are also bound by an additional contract by the content provider which will be an additional 12 clauses and likely more than 40 pages.

      The fact you use the word "simple" means you never actually looked at what you spent your money on.

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