Anyone holding off from switching to Windows 11 might now want to consider the jump – especially if they like gaming on their PCs. The team at Steam have just confirmed that they have ended support for older versions of Windows which means users will no longer get technical support, security updates or guarantees that titles will continue running smoothly.
Steam, which is owned and run by the Valve Corporation, is a hugely popular way of playing games on Windows devices with this service offering instant access to over 50,000 top titles including FC2024, Elden Ring, Football Manager, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldur’s Gate.
Although some games will continue to run on older devices, users are being urged to switch things up if they don’t want to be hit by issues in the future.
The end support affects all PCs running Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 10 remains active but with Microsoft ending support next year it might be a good time to move straight to Windows 11 to future-proof yourself.
“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,” Valve said in an update.
“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.”
Although Windows 7 and Windows 8 are no longer supported by Microsoft they remain pretty popular. In fact, latest figures from the team at Statcounter show these operating systems are still active on around 5 percent of the world’s PCs.
Windows 10 continues to dominate with a 67 percent user base although Microsoft will clearly be hoping that next year’s end of support will finally get people moving to Windows 11.
