News Valve Prepares to Kill Steam Gaming on Windows 7 and 8

[Admin]

Valve will end support for Steam on Windows 7 and 8 PCs in January 2024. There are still 1.9% of Steam users on the older operating systems.

Valve Prepares to Kill Steam Gaming on Windows 7 and 8 : Read more

 

[RichardtST]

Well, that sucks. My old (2012!) development PC with Win7 is what drives my VR headset in the living room. Does this mean I won't be able to run SteamVR on it anymore? Do I really need to go find a whole new freaking PC just to run VR now? That doesn't work for me. I do not like that at all. Steam runs on Linux, but most of the games don't, so that isn't even an option. If they want to freeze updates that would be ok, but it better still run.

 

[ezst036]

With Microsoft not supporting 7 and 8 much longer, why should Valve? The browsers don't support Win7/8 either, AFAIK. Google Chrome at least.

Valve should mainly just support Win10, 11, and of course Linux.

 

[mo_osk]

Well, that sucks. My old (2012!) development PC with Win7 is what drives my VR headset in the living room. Does this mean I won't be able to run SteamVR on it anymore? Do I really need to go find a whole new freaking PC just to run VR now? That doesn't work for me. I do not like that at all. Steam runs on Linux, but most of the games don't, so that isn't even an option. If they want to freeze updates that would be ok, but it better still run.

You could always update to Windows 10. Even updating to 11 would probably be possible without much of an hassle.

 

[EJ42]

You could always update to Windows 10. Even updating to 11 would probably be possible without much of an hassle.

Yeah...Windows 11 isn't going to run on that.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Don't forget the biggest reasons to stay on 7: ease of piracy, and reasons of privacy. Windows 7 may have a ~5% market share worldwide, but it's over 13% in Russia and 30% in China (figures by Stat Counter), places where government is far more invasive than in the USA and EU, the latter of which has a special edition of Windows 10 and 11. It will be interesting to see how the steam hardware survey changes in January after removing Windows 7 support, and to see if any hackarounds are developed.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Yeah you see when operating systems have been long retired, software developers Don’t want to maintain that old stuff forever because it’s a money loss situation. They don’t really care how much you don’t like it so there’s no use complaining

There’s no company out there in the universe, that whatever support old unsupported software forever

 

[truerock]

Well, that sucks. My old (2012!) development PC with Win7 is what drives my VR headset in the living room. Does this mean I won't be able to run SteamVR on it anymore? Do I really need to go find a whole new freaking PC just to run VR now? That doesn't work for me. I do not like that at all. Steam runs on Linux, but most of the games don't, so that isn't even an option. If they want to freeze updates that would be ok, but it better still run.

I built my PC in 2012. I upgraded it for free to Windows 10 in 2016.
My PC is still using its original CPU, motherboard, nVidia GTX graphics card, etc.

I would upgrade to a newer PC if the performance improvement would be significant... I'm just not sure it would be that noticeable. I guess when nVidia delivers graphics cards that support DisplayPort2 with USB-C ports I'll upgrade. I've been running 1080p at 60Hz for over 10 years. I think I want to run 4k at 120Hz with 10bit color to make an upgrade worthwhile.

 

[RichardtST]

Yeah you see when operating systems have been long retired, software developers Don’t want to maintain that old stuff forever because it’s a money loss situation. They don’t really care how much you don’t like it so there’s no use complaining

There’s no company out there in the universe, that whatever support old unsupported software forever

There's a difference between stopping support/updates vs just plain doesn't run. If they just want to stop updates I'm fine with that although their reasoning is dumb... "Oh gee, google chrome has a built-in to Windows 11 that we want to use". Yeah.... no. That's lame. This is exactly the reason I stick to the KISS Principle and refuse to be dependent on outside libraries. If we start letting software developers determine when we have to buy new hardware, then we'll all be buying all new hardware every 6 months.

 

[Math Geek]

fortunately, i'm pretty much on linux as my daily driver so windows can bite me.

linux makes it fairly easy to pass a full gpu through to a vm (well much easier than within windows anyway) so firing up a windows vm to play a game if i want to is not that big of a deal. keeps a lot of the privacy concerns down as well when all it's used for is to launch a game. everything else is done in linux.

if you're not willing/able to go that route and still want to use steam, then you got no choice. it sucks for sure, but the choice is made for you if you have to stick with windows and wish to use steam.

 

[BX4096]

Windows 7 was released in 2009, and Windows 8 was a piece of crap. It's time to let both go.

Any power user switching to and properly setting up Windows 10 today won't be missing anything worth mentioning but will find some new features that are undeniably worth it. Windows 11 is a bit trickier, but speaking personally, I was managed to set it up to behave pretty much identical to my earlier Windows 10 setup, and I am very particular about how I smoothly want my OS to run.

 

[artk2219]

Yeah...Windows 11 isn't going to run on that.

Windows 10 will load on it with no issues though and 11 will as well if you slightly tweak the installer. There is no good reason why windows 11 wont work on older machines, its a pretty arbitrary limitation by microsoft.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

There's a difference between stopping support/updates vs just plain doesn't run. If they just want to stop updates I'm fine with that although their reasoning is dumb... "Oh gee, google chrome has a built-in to Windows 11 that we want to use". Yeah.... no. That's lame. This is exactly the reason I stick to the KISS Principle and refuse to be dependent on outside libraries. If we start letting software developers determine when we have to buy new hardware, then we'll all be buying all new hardware every 6 months.

It’s a matter of testing and how expensive the testing is. If they’re going to support it, they have to test it. That’s why. They don’t want bug reports that it doesn’t work anymore because they’re not going to look into it or support it. If you think that’s a stupid idea, then oh well.

 

[mo_osk]

Yeah the actual minimal configuration to run W10 or 11 comfortably is surprisingly low, there is no reason a 2012 PC used to run VR shouldn't be able to do it.

Obviously you have to bypass the artificial limitation out on W11 but it has become trivial.

 

[AloofBrit]

Windows 10 will load on it with no issues though and 11 will as well if you slightly tweak the installer. There is no good reason why windows 11 wont work on older machines, its a pretty arbitrary limitation by microsoft.

I couldn't figure out how to get my unsupported 'tweaked installer' 11 test box to take the recent 22H2 update without reinstalling

That was the first problem like that I have had - I'm expecting this will happen when every big update rolls around

 

[King_V]

Well, that sucks. My old (2012!) development PC with Win7 is what drives my VR headset in the living room. Does this mean I won't be able to run SteamVR on it anymore? Do I really need to go find a whole new freaking PC just to run VR now? That doesn't work for me. I do not like that at all. Steam runs on Linux, but most of the games don't, so that isn't even an option. If they want to freeze updates that would be ok, but it better still run.

Exactly what about your 2012-era PC makes Windows 10 a problem?

I've run Sandy Bridge i5 and i3 CPUs with 8 GB RAM on Windows 10, and even a Core 2 Quad with 4GB RAM, though the latter was some time back.

 

[evdjj3j]

Some reasoning behind the support policy is revealed. It turns out that the newest Steam features “rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome”

So the new IE6 is rearing its ugly head.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Yeah...Windows 11 isn't going to run on that.

How are you running VR on a PC that can't even run Win11?

Does not compute syntax error

 

[techfreak]

Most software will eventually end support on older Windows which I still have old PCs running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
It's sad like some say older Windows is actually better especially Windows 7 despite it is very old.
Those with old PC hardware will be force to upgrade to newer PC with latest Windows.
I run older Windows mainly due to my line of work which is repair, mainly to test older hardware properly.
Since Steam will discontinued support that means I have to find other means to do stress test or proper
hardware test for older hardware.

 

[randyh121]

Well, that sucks. My old (2012!) development PC with Win7 is what drives my VR headset in the living room. Does this mean I won't be able to run SteamVR on it anymore? Do I really need to go find a whole new freaking PC just to run VR now? That doesn't work for me. I do not like that at all. Steam runs on Linux, but most of the games don't, so that isn't even an option. If they want to freeze updates that would be ok, but it better still run.

How the hell are you running VR on Win7. You must be using some weird work arounds

 

[EJ42]

This is why GOG is sometimes better than Steam. You don't have to rely on their BS loader to keep playing your games. Once the game is installed, it's DRM-free.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Some reasoning behind the support policy is revealed. It turns out that the newest Steam features “rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome”

So the new IE6 is rearing its ugly head.

Yeah, I was just going to post something like that. that it could be related to them relying on new software that is not available on old platforms. And this confirms it.

 

[EJ42]

How are you running VR on a PC that can't even run Win11?

Does not compute syntax error

I'm not sure you understand the Windows 11 restrictions. A PC that old won't have a supported CPU or the TPM2 module that Windows 11 requires.

 

[neojack]

people should be able to launch an old version of steam and launch the games they already bought on it.

Imagine if nintendo or sony did the same ? "sorry guys we will wipe all PS3s remotely because they are not supported anymore !"
Windows 7 or even 95 is fine if you don't go on the internet. If it worked 15 years ago it can still work.

 

[mo_osk]

people should be able to launch an old version of steam and launch the games they already bought on it.

Imagine if nintendo or sony did the same ? "sorry guys we will wipe all PS3s remotely because they are not supported anymore !"
Windows 7 or even 95 is fine if you don't go on the internet. If it worked 15 years ago it can still work.

Steam is foremost DRM platform, what you are proposing defeat its purpose. There are numerous way of accessing your steam library, even if your hardware is very outdated. At this point continuing on gaming on W7 is just stubbornness.

And Sony and Nintendo attitude toward backward support and legacy gaming is even worse, Nintendo just retired the whole WII U and 3DS library.