Valve has halted its official support for the Steam launcher on older Windows operating systems 7, 8, and 8.1 from Jan 1, 2024, marking the end of an era for these obsolete platforms. As such, these operating systems will no longer receive security updates or support.
For now, Steam might continue to work with these older operating systems. Valve announced the retirement as its launcher depends on some software vendors’ security patches. More specifically, Steam relies on a version of Google Chrome that’s not supported on Windows 7. As you’d expect with such announcements, Valve recommends that users jump to Windows 10 or newer.
Better now than never, if ever?
Microsoft stopped deploying updates and providing technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020. Even though Windows 8 and 8.1 weren’t as popular, the operating system giant stopped rolling out security updates and technical support for those platforms in January 2023.
These security patches are vital because malicious programs can affect multiple apps and launchers, requiring companies to add safeguards. Security researchers also find vulnerabilities in both hardware and software, which are then corrected through Windows updates.
The end of support for these operating systems won’t impact many Steam users. December’s Steam hardware survey shows these operating systems represent between 0% and 0.01% of Steam users worldwide. However, Windows Server 2019 is still supported as Microsoft will keep rolling out security updates until Jan. 9, 2024, impacting about 0.06% of Steam users.
Epic Games supports Windows 7 for now, but given the lack of security updates for the operating system, it probably won’t be long before other launchers move on, too. Windows 10’s support is scheduled to end on Oct. 14, 2025, with Microsoft later having a paid support subscription.
Over 96.40% of Steam users are on Windows, while MacOS and Linux have a negligible share in comparison. It will be interesting to see if newer users would migrate to Windows 10, Windows 11, or any of the Linux distros. Arch Linux Ubuntu 64-bit is a home for 0.15% to 0.14% of Steam’s user base.
