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submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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[-] candyman337@sh.itjust.works 103 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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 are 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.

Or they're 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.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[-] xyla@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 10 months ago

microsoft dropped windows 7 support like 3 years ago

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 12 points 10 months ago

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

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[-] thehatfox@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[-] candyman337@sh.itjust.works 16 points 10 months ago

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.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[-] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

Windows 8 is over 10 years old and was EoL years ago. No distro is maintaining that level of support outside of corporate and even that's in the specialized more expensive custom contracts.

[-] btaf45@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago

Nobody needs Steam's "support". They just need Steam to unlock their DRM for games that they have been playing for years and Steam has now broken.

[-] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

👌👍 whenever you say

[-] BaardFigur@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've used Steam since before Chrome was a thing. So you happen to know what they uses before? Internet Explorer?

Also, I wouldn't blame Google as much as I would blame Microsoft. When Microsoft themselves aren't supporting the OS, why should anyone else (like Google or Valve)?

this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
303 points (96.9% liked)

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