Steam has finally stopped working on several older Windows operating systems, following a warning from Valve that it planned to drop support earlier this year. With little fanfare, Windows 7 and Windows 8 gaming on Steam is no longer possible following the most recent Steam client update on November 5.
↫ Ben Stockton at PCGamesN
It’s honestly wild that Valve supported Windows 7 and 8 for this long for Steam in the first place. They’ve been out of support for a long time, and at this point in time, less than 0.3% of Steam users were using Windows 7 or 8. Investing any resources in continuing to support them would be financially irresponsible, while also aiding a tiny bit in allowing people to use such unsupported, insecure systems to this day.
I’m sure at least one of you is still rocking Windows 7 or 8 as your daily driver operating system, so I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear this, but it’s really, really time to move on. Buying a Windows 10 or 11 license on eBay or whatever costs a few euros at most – if you’re not eligible for one the free upgrade programs Microsoft ran – and especially Windows 10 should run just fine on pretty much anything Windows 7 or 8 runs on.
Do note that with Windows 10, though, you’ll be back in the same boat next year.
I sincerely doubt that they will cut off Windows 10 in just one year. Please note that they cut off Windows 7 not after ending support for the mainstream version intended for home/power users, not after ending support for the ESU version intended for business/corporate users, but only after ending support for the really last version, one of the most niche POSReady which lost Microsoft’s ESU support just a month ago.
Like they did with windows XP? Still works just fine. Yeah you do not get the achievements. Games still work and store seems to work reasonably well after a few reloads. IDK, i do not see this as a big thing. Did not steam support end for XP in something like 2014. yup still works, and for those retro enthusiasts the chat function has to be offshored to a mobile device or a linux machine. works splendidly. I am running Shogo MAD on my xeon 5000 system right now as we speak.
Be real, Yeah GoG is a better option in the long run but have not steam proven their trustworthyness by now? Yeah there was that “commandos strike force” debacle 15 years ago…. lets dwell on that. Everyone that bought it can STILL play it, get over it.
Yeah multiplayer is dead but that is due to gamespy anyways.
GOG is a better option but they do not keep the “last versions” of the software compatible with each EOL-ed Windows version. Sometimes they actually keep older versions of software, but are doing this for other reasons. So generally you do have to figure out and preserve the “last working version” of gog releases for yourself.
Titles like Space Engine, Universe Sandbox, No Man’s Sky come to my mind. GOG did preserve “Witcher 3 GOTY” which is Win7 compatible, but this is related to “REDkit update” which has GPU requirements increased.
They do not preserved CP 2077, but Win7 and DX11 compatible version (before 1.6 AFAIR) was barely playable anyway.
Is this some chromium stripped modded version of Steam?
It is the official version from when XP was still supported, and updateing after that works fine, but it does not update chrome parts of the client so some stuff like the store does not work. But the library and playing and installing games works just fine still.
Aha, thanks!
I must correct myself, yeah you still get the achievements but the overlay that tell you that you got one does not work.
Yeah yeah we get it Thom. After repeating 782 times, we know you have something against microsoft operating systems which are not officially supported by MS. You think people who use them are idiots looking for trouble.
But if it was beos or some other extremely niche thing, you would just praise them.
It’s pretty boring at this stage. Move on, will you?
“You can pry Windows 2000 out of my cold, dead hands! I don’t care if no applications work on my system anymore. I will NEVER update my Windows or switch to Linux!”
That’s how you baby ducks sound
From the “baby ducks’ perspective”, the problem lies not with win7 or whatever, but with electron and the bigtech.
And 95% of the apps stopping to work on old windows are electron-based sandcastles.
Before praising electron shitstorm, think about it.
Office 2016 continues to work on those machines. Sumatra pdf continues to work on those machines. Autohotkey continues to work. Media Player Classic, Audacity, Ditto, Fastone thingies, sane notepad clones… They all work. Even browsers work, if they are bothered to.
And no, these machines aren’t security nightmares. They all lie behind firewalls in their xdsl modems or hotspots or whatnot.
But because bigtech decided to push people into ever more restricted devices which don’t run photoshop without subscription, “baby ducks” have throw away those otherwise working machines as e-waste, and buy new prospective e-waste which almost universally draw more watts, and subscribe to this and that. And learn new operating systems after their 50th birthday…
No. That’s not fair. Not fair to the “baby ducks”, not fair to the planet.
Yeah because we all need to embrace MS Win11 Recall right? You sound like a real asshole.
Mandatory meme, Windows 7 and 8 users can always switch to GNU/Linux and continue to enjoy Steam support.
That is what I did. Works so much better than running actual Windows, honestly. No regrets, but I’ll never buy another game on Steam. GOG solved their policy/attitude problems by offering something sooo much better.
Good to hear that and indeed a while back i again checked the GNU/Linux on desktop market share and was somewhat surprise it’s growing substantially. Once we reach two digit numbers then i guess is on where things will start to move forward quickly.
I was forced to upgrade my wife’s PC to Windows 10 after years using Windows 7, because most apps, including Google Chrome, just won’t work on it anymore.
And she HATED it with full might!! Small things like putting the copy/cut/paste in icons instead of menu itens are really bad usability-wise.
Maybe next time, if Microsoft keeps doing those horrible UI changes, that helps me to switch her to using Linux 😉
protomank,
You say this jokingly, but I actually think modern linux desktop UIs are less jarring for windows users than modern windows is, haha. Even things that windows used to do well, like the control panel settings, has gotten worse. And the new OS context menus are a weird amalgamation of what they used to be. It just seems like windows regressed on the finishing touches.
Of course, the elephant in the room with linux is not really the the desktop UI, but rather installing & supporting 3rd party applications. This can still be difficult with linux. Steam/proton has done an exceptional job providing support for windows games, but outside of steam the application situation can still prove difficult. Sometimes wine works, but just the other day it was giving me a lot of trouble. Even native linux software can be difficult to install outside of repos too.
I’m a fan of simple solutions like “”extract package and run it”. DOS actually did this well, I don’t like the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard scattering package files everywhere to install them.
Haiku gets a lot right, and one of those is software installation and UI usability. Even though consistency is to be desired with the amount of Linux/QT/GTK ports Haiku has now, the UI is almost always clear and usable. Software can be manually installed by drag-and-drop (like MacOSX) but can also be installed via a package manager (like Linux)
The123king,
I should probably give Haiku a spin to experience it for myself. The ability to drag and drop software and have it just work sounds wonderful.
Obviously everyone wants a simple install process. But I’d rather the install process be simple because the underlying mechanisms are genuinely simple and obvious. In practice though sometimes what gets delivered is a shiny abstraction hiding a rat’s nest of complexity under the hood.
Take installers like flatpak or even steam. I give those projects credit for successfully hiding complexity from users. but they still require complex and sometimes fidgety plumbing to do it. Things don’t technically have to be engineered like this, but for better or worse we’re often locked into legacy designs. As a clone, Linux didn’t even benefit from a fresh start when it was new. The opportunities for fresh starts are exceedingly rare unless you’re willing and able to leave the mainstream behind.
Exactly what happened in my household. Windows 7 got deprecated, MS went down the spyware and subscription road and I simply got her a Linux box which she now says she likes much better after being LEFT THE FUCK ALONE for a few years with no forced upgrades or other M$ stupidity.
no need to buy any keys, you can still install windows 10 using the iso with a windows 7/8 key for free but the people still on 7/8 it’s nothing todo with paying for a key
I sure hope someone has archived the last working Steam releases both for Windows XP and 7.
Otherwise I don’t understand how you could play old games on these OS’es.