Valve’s digital PC gaming distribution service, Steam, will stop supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 at the start of next year.<\/p>\n
In a statement<\/strong><\/a> on the Steam support page on Tuesday, Valve said that these operating systems would no longer be able to run the Steam client from 1 January 2024.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n Valve explained the change was necessary as core features in Steam relied on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functioned on older versions of Windows.<\/p>\n Furthermore, future versions of Steam will require Windows features and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.<\/p>\n Microsoft officially dropped feature and security update support for Windows 7 more than two years ago.<\/p>\n It also recently shut down its paid-for extended security update (ESU) programme for the operating system, which was still prevalent in many enterprises.<\/p>\n Windows 8 support was dropped back in 2016, while Windows 8.1 support ended in January 2023.<\/p>\n For these reasons, Steam said it strongly encouraged Windows 7\/8\/8.1 users to update to a new operating system (OS) sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n “Computers running these operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to new malware and other exploits which will not be patched,” Steam said.<\/p>\n “That malware can cause your PC, Steam and games to perform poorly or crash.”<\/p>\n “That malware can also be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services,” it added.<\/p>\n According to the Steam Hardware and Software Survey for February 2023<\/strong><\/a>, less than 2% of users were using the operating systems slated for end-of-support.<\/p>\n The 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 accounted for 1.52% of users, while 0.34% used Windows 8.1.<\/p>\n Presuming those numbers stay roughly the same by the end of the year, the change would cut about 2.5 million monthly active players off from Steam until they upgrade.<\/p>\n That would be based on the last available figure of 132 million total players.<\/p>\n But usage of these operating systems has continued to drop since Windows 10 launched. The latest monthly decline was 0.24%.<\/p>\n If such a reduction continued in the coming months, there would be no more Windows 7\/8\/8.1 Steam users by September or October 2023.<\/p>\n The most popular OS among Steam users during February 2023 was Windows 10, claiming 62.33% of all users.<\/p>\n However, it lost about 1.13% of its share, while the second most common OS \u2014 Windows 11 \u2014 gained 1.73% to reach 32.06% of Steam users.<\/p>\n For the first time, Microsoft’s latest OS now has more than half the Steam share of Windows 10.<\/p>\n That milestone comes about one and a half years after Windows 11 was launched.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the latest Steam Survey shows the change will impact less than 2% of the PC game distribution service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":465827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,3602,18208,5214,451,19781],"class_list":["post-485749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-microsoft","tag-steam","tag-valve","tag-windows-7","tag-windows-8","tag-windows-8-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485779,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485749\/revisions\/485779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2.5 million players using old Windows operating systems<\/h2>\n
\nNow read: Diablo IV beta is killing RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards \u2014 Reports<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"