Steam Support For Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 Evaporates

The Biggest Incentive To Move To Windows 10 As Of Yet!

As of yesterday, Steam support for Microsoft OSes predating Windows 10 ended.  While you should still be able to launch the Steam client and the games on it there are some things to keep in mind if you continue to avoid Windows 10.  Firstly, your Steam client will not receive any more updates.  It might seem unlikely but Steam and the games on it have been used to spread malware, one example is only a few months old.  Stick with Windows 7/8 and sooner or later someone is going to find an exploit on the old Steam client.

It’s not just for security either, as the official Steam Support team will no longer respond to tickets raised by a Microsoft user that hasn’t updated to Windows 10 or 11.  To make matters worse, your Steam games will also no longer receive updates unless you let a new version of Windows take over your system. 

The reason, as you might expect, is not out of concern for their users but instead because of Valve’s love of Chrome.  Steam is actually an embedded Chrome instance, and Alphabet’s newest version won’t run on any Microsoft OS older than Win10.  To be fair that is in part because of security concerns arising from supporting legacy versions of Windows and Valve is very upfront about the reason for this change.

For those curious souls, this change will have an effect on 1% of Steam users.