Steam Cuts Official Support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1

All good things must come to an end, and it seems that Steam has made the decision to finally cut some older Microsoft operating systems loose from their official support list. Windows 7 and Windows 8 still have a lot of users. From those who fear change to those who just stubbornly oppose it, and I see quite often those who believe that Windows 11 is terrible, personally, I rather like Windows 11, but being a tech journalist, using the latest of everything is kinda important to what I do.

Steam

So what does this mean? Well, if you’re a stubborn old boot, you’ll find that the Steam Client will no longer receive any updates going forward. This includes critical security updates too, so if you’re still using Steam on these platforms going forward, you could be at risk of serious exploits in the future. You’ll get no technical assistance from Steam either, not that their customer support was much help in the past. You’ll need to upgrade to at least Windows 10 to get updates and support from now on.

Steam relies heavily on an embedded Google Chrome browser, and with Chrome having just dropped support for the older operating systems, Steam are having to follow suit, and I suspect a bunch of other software is doing the same too.

Here’s the official statement from Steam, which you can read in full below.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support

As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

In order to ensure continued operation of Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users should update to a more recent version of Windows. We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024, but we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date.

This change is required as core 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 10 and above.

We strongly encourage all Windows 7/8/8.1 users to update sooner rather than later. Microsoft ended security updates and technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020 and for Windows 8.1 in January 2023. Computers running these operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to new malware and other exploits which will not be patched. That malware can cause your PC, Steam and games to perform poorly or crash. That malware can also be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services.