At the beginning of 2023 Users with older PCs got some bad news: Valve announced that Steam it would no longer support Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in 2024. Therefore, users had two options: update their computer or use the platform without benefiting from the updates.
Valve also made this decision because it observed how many users were now using Windows 10 and Windows 11. In particular, the Steam Hardware & Software survey (November 2023) revealed that only 0.81% of Steam users were using Windows 7, 8 and 8. However, the share of use of the most recent Windows versions was much higher : 53.53% Windows 10 and 42.04% Windows 11.
In any case, from yesterday, January 1, 2024 Steam “will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After this date, the Steam client will stop working on these versions of Windows. In order to continue using Steam and all other products purchased on Steam, the users will need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows”.
This decision was also dictated because “Some key Steam features depend on a built-in version of Google Chrome that no longer works on older versions of Windows. Additionally, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates that are only present on Windows 10 and later.”
