Steam’s dropping Windows 7 and Windows 8 support

Security updates and Chromium are forcing Valve to drop Windows 7/8 support from Steam

Valve has confirmed that they are dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 from their Steam gaming client on January 1st 2024, stating that the platform’s newest features and planned security updates will require PC gamers to move to newer versions of Windows.

Currently, less than 2% of Steam users run Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 on their systems, making Valve’s planned dropping of support for these OS’ a non-issue for most PC gamers. With this change, Windows 10 will be the oldest Windows OS that Steam will support, and Windows 10 launched back in 2015.

Below is what Valve had to say about their plan to drop support for legacy Windows operating systems.

As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. 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.

The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.

One of the reasons behind Valve’s Windows support plans is the fact that many of Steam’s newest features are due to the fact that a lot of Steam’s latest features are based on an embedded version of Google’s Chrome browser. Since Chrome is also dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, Valve needs to follow suit. Beyond that, future changes to Steam are set to utilise new Windows security features, which are only available to Windows 10 and above OS’.

While it is sad to see Valve dropping support for older Windows versions, it is worth remembering that Windows 10 launched in 2015. Windows 10 is an old OS, and having it as a minimum requirement shouldn’t be seen as a major issue for PC gamers. All new PCs are shipping with Windows 11, and almost nobody is using Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 PCs to game. Now is the right time for Valve to move on from these older Windows OS’.

You can join the discussion on Steam dropping Windows 7/8 support on the OC3D Forums.