Steam Is Dropping Support For Windows 7 And Windows 8

If you are among the few Steam users still running either Windows 7 or 8, it's about time you consider upgrading your system. In a recent post on its community FAQ page, Steam confirmed that it is ending support for these legacy operating systems by the end of 2023. Besides Windows 7 and Windows 8, this change would also affect users still running Windows 8.1 systems. The official end-of-support date announced by Steam is January 1, 2024 — only nine months away. After this date, users still using Windows 7 or 8 will lose access to the Steam client and all the associated games and features.

The announcement lists several reasons that have led to Steam having to pull the plug on these operating systems. To begin with, the smooth functioning of the past few versions of the Steam Client and the newer features it had on offer depended on an embedded version of the Google Chrome browser. In the future, however, this version of Google Chrome will no longer work on Windows 7 and 8. In addition, Steam also clarifies that security updates for future versions require the computer to use either Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating systems.

Steam's decision to officially end support for older operating systems doesn't surprise many, given that Microsoft has stopped issuing updates and software patches for Windows 7 and 8.

Data from Steam's February 2023 Hardware and Software Survey indicates that most Steam users (64.68%) use Windows 10 to access the Steam client. Microsoft's latest operating system — Windows 11 — is growing its market share from just 24.22% in October 2022 to 33.27% in February 2023. In contrast, the percentage of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users currently stand at 0.36% and 0.10%, respectively.

However, if Steam has hit a record of more than 30 million concurrent users as recently as October 2022, then even the relatively small percentage of users adds up to significant numbers. Mathematically, this also means that almost 600,000 individuals of the 30 million figure could be on Windows 7 or 8 systems.

If you happen to be one of those 600,000 Steam users still clinging to Windows 7 or 8, it's about time you upgrade your system to one of the newer versions of Windows. As clarified earlier, users still have roughly nine months to make the change, so there is no need for a desperate dash to purchase an upgrade.