Valve has announced that its Steam online gaming platform will officially drop support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 platforms starting January 1, 2024.

Once the end of support date is reached, the Steam Client software will stop working on these unsupported Windows versions, with Valve recommending users upgrade to a newer Windows version to continue playing their games through Steam.

“This change is necessary because core Steam functionality relies on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer works on older versions of Windows,” Valve said. said.

“Additionally, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only found in Windows 10 and above.”

Valve also strongly encouraged users to upgrade their Windows 7/8/8.1 systems as soon as possible before end of support in January 2024 to protect them from malware or other malicious attacks targeting them if left exposed on Internet.

“This malware can cause your PC, Steam and games to malfunction or crash. This malware can also be used to steal your Steam account credentials or other services.”

Users running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can always upgrade to windows 10 for free using a digital license even though the company has announced that it will end this promotional offer July 29, 2016.

Windows 7 Extended Security Updates ended in January

Today’s announcement comes after Microsoft revealed on January 10, 2023 that it has stopped providing security updates and technical support for all editions of Windows 7 (including Professional and Enterprise).

All editions of Windows 8.1, launched nine years ago in November 2013, also reached EOS on the same day.

Currently, Windows 7 is running on more than 5.39% of all Windows systems worldwide and Windows 8.1 is used by 1.15% of customers, both rapidly losing market share since Microsoft’s January announcement. according GlobalStats statistics counter.

Microsoft and Steam aren’t the only companies ditching Windows 7 and 8, with a similar announcement from Google saying Chrome version 110 would be removed support for Windows 7/8.1 from February 2023.

Other vendors dropped support for the two unsupported operating systems before Microsoft announced they would stop receiving security updates.

For example, NVIDIA stopped providing Windows 7 and 8.1 drivers last year. in October 2021.

The impact of this change will likely be minimal since only 0.10% of users are still using Windows 7 while 0.36% are using Windows 8.1, according to the February 2023 Steam Hardware and Software Survey.