Long Overdue OS Upgrade
According to the latest Steam Hardware and Software survey, 66.15% of users are now running Windows 10 64-bit OS. However, there are still 0.12% still running Windows XP 32-bit. Unfortunately for those users, Valve will officially end support for the now 17-year old OS starting January 1st, 2019.
In addition to Windows XP, Valve is also ending official support for Windows Vista. The now 12-year old OS has never been quite popular even in its prime. So there are actually less Vista users today than those still running XP.
What Does This Mean for Windows XP and Vista Users?
To put it in plain terms, the actual Steam client will not even run at all after January 1st. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows.
According to Valve, this is because the newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome. Which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 7 and above.
Users running XP and Vista would notice that some features of the client were already unavailable earlier in 2018. This includes the massively revamped friends and chat feature.
