Effective January 1, 2024, Steam has officially discontinued support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, which will affect users still running the client on these outdated operating systems. As a result, Steam customers on these platforms will no longer receive any updates, including critical security patches. Steam Support will also no longer provide technical support for issues related to these operating systems.
While Valve expects games and the Steam client to continue to work on these older operating systems for some time after the cutoff date, they cannot guarantee full functionality after January 1, 2024. This is because Steam’s core functionality relies on the built-in version of Google Chrome, which is no longer compatible with older versions of Windows. Additionally, future versions of Steam will require Windows security features and updates that are only available for Windows 10 and higher.
Valve strongly recommends that users upgrade to a newer version of Windows to ensure continued access to Steam and any purchased products. This decision coincides with Microsoft’s own decision to end support for Windows 7 in January 2020 and Windows 8.1 in January 2023.
Valve’s official hardware and software survey from December 2023 shows that a minimal percentage of users are still running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 – 0.06% and 0.15%, respectively. Instead, a significant majority, 53.45%, have switched to Windows 10, and 41.95% are using Windows 11.
