We reported earlier last year that Steam would officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems, as of January 1, 2024, at 10 am.
As of January 1, 2024, the popular PC gaming platform has officially stopped working on Windows 7/8/8.1. Further, 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,” the company revealed via Steam’s Support Section.
Valve, the developer of Steam, advises users to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows such as Windows 10 or Windows 11 for continued operation of Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam.
The company further adds that the Steam client and games on Windows 7/8/8.1 are likely to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024. However, Valve warns that the service could stop working at any time, as many Steam components are dependent on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows.
For those unaware, Google stopped supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and 8.1 in January 2023, with Chrome 109 being the final version available on old Windows versions. Besides depending on Chrome, future versions of Steam will require Windows features and security updates that are only present in Windows 10 and above.
Since Microsoft has already ended security updates and technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020 and for Windows 8.1 in January 2023, users who are using Windows 7/8/8.1 are strongly recommended to update to the newest versions of Windows.
Also, computers running these operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to malware and cyberattacks, which cannot be patched without security updates. As a result, the malware could cause your PC, Steam, and games to perform poorly or crash or be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services.
