this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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138
Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 (www.neowin.net)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1::Customers sticking to the good-old (and dead) Windows 7 now have one more reason to ditch the operating system: as of January 1, 2024, Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Not really Steam's fault, their app is built in a chromium browser, which stopped supporting those OSes a few years ago. A perfect example of Google having too much control over the Internet. This is what happens when big companies are allowed to purchase their competitors.

Edit: people in this thread or either really forgetting how much trust google used to have with basically the entire Internet. They were seen as the "good guys" for a long time.

Additionally people are forgetting how unique and revolutionary chromium based desktop apps were when they first came out. It is a colossal pain in the ass to create a modern browser, if you have a web page in your desktop app like steam does, it quickly became a very difficult, time consuming, and virtually fruitless endeavor to develop a headless browser just to sit within your desktop app when you could just go with chromium.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

And if memory serves me right, Microsoft is dropping W7, 8, and 8.1 support this year too. I love to shit on Google, but I also love to shit on Microsoft.

Especially since W10 EOL is on the horizon.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

microsoft dropped windows 7 support like 3 years ago

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

January 10th 2023 was the last update for the extended security update program.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Google (or any other browser vendor) never forced anyone to rely on a web browser engine to develop desktop applications.

This is what happens when developers make trade-offs for convenience at the expense of control.

Also in Steams’s case the pre-Windows 10 Steam user base is also tiny, and may not be considered commercially viable to support regardless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No they never forced them but they said "hey here's this really awesome sandboxed platform that runs on almost any os, and it's a modern browser!" That's really enticing to a platform like steam where most of their app is web based. Steam isn't a desktop application, it's a hybrid application that needs a web browser. Do you know how hard it is to upkeep a modern browser? There's a reason it's pretty much only chromium and Mozilla making browsers. It's not laziness, it made sense, and Google was the only one making anything like that at the time for developers to use.

Once Google had the market share, they started making changes that they knew would affect everyone using their platform, and that's how they wanted it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Linux

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The "let them eat cake" cry for social media.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, except If cake were free and accessible to anyone regardless of silverware or plates.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It uses Chromium on Linux too. It uses DRM on Linux too.

The real answer is GoG.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why does it matter if Steam uses Chromium on Linux. It's not like Gecko dropped embed support or anything

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

The alternative to Chromium-based apps is not Gecko-based apps; it is native apps, that do not require an entire bloated web engine to run.

This is especially obnoxious with Steam since it wants to run in the background 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah, gog doesn't do anything to suppory Linux. Valve is the reason Linux gaming is as good as it is. Pretty much all the games that are on gog are also drm free on steam.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Okay, you just blew my mind. How does one download installers for DRM-free games on Steam? How do you even tell which games are DRM-free? I was not able to find answers with some quick searching, just community-maintained lists of games that are ostensibly DRM-free in one way or another. But how do I verify that? How do I archive installers?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You can usually just copy the game files

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Fuck GoG

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

It is ridiculous that Steam won't let you play your games you payed for outside of steam. Games that you've played for years on Windows 7 suddenly no longer play. Steam is like a DRM system that suddenly stops working and makes all the stuff you bought worthless.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What if a security exploit happens to affect that older version of Steam that’s no longer updated and somebody’s able to hack your account change your password change your email now they have a brand new entire steam library that you no longer have anymore. Would you rather that? This is more of them covering themselves legally, so if that were to happen, they cannot be sued

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Would you rather that?

I would rather Steam let me play all my games I legally purchased on Windows 7 outside of steam. If Steam is not going to work on Windows 7 than stay the hell out of the way and let me play the games I bought and have installed on my computer.

I hope somebody sues them for stealing their purchased games.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This isn't Steam's fault. The OS is dead because Microsoft killed it (as part of their ongoing planned-obsolescence operating system program). There is no conceivable way Steam can maintain security for anyone's account on an OS that hasn't received security updates for three years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nothing unusual about cutting the cord at some point when major updates introduce big enough differences that it becomes a pain to make sure things stay compatible. Same thing happen with any OS.

I swear some people around here must be mad that Microsoft doesn't release Windows 98 updates anymore...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Steam is literally DRM. But nobody wants to acknowledge that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Are you running an OS that hasn't received a security update in a year (if you purchase the ESU packages)???

Dude, at least move on to Windows 10 or something, that's just you taking bad decisions at this point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah I don't blame valve for Microsoft dropping security updates and neglecting the last good version of windows. I've switched to Linux where this will never happen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We're a GoG-first house, here.

I get that steam dropping win7 was unavoidable based on their shitty choice of browser base, but the alternative was only Firefox and we know how Mozilla-the-app went.

Anyway, GoG gives us control over our purchased copies, and I like that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

There was a time when software didn’t need an entire browser engine to run. We used to call them native applications.

Although looking at how small the pre-Windows 10 customer base is I imagine Valve would have considered it not commercially viable to continue supporting however easy maintaining the codebase was.