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Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1
(www.neowin.net)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Honesty for a lot of older games gog is the answer. A lot of older games just don't run well or at all on proton.
Though you could also just get an old console to play them on and never worry about updates breaking things again.
It's good for new games too! With Lutris I can even install Windows games with Proton on Linux, or choose my own Wine setup. I think Heroic Game Launcher does the same.
Best of all, no internet connection is required once a game is downloaded, unless the game specifically demands it. You can save your installers locally and keep them forever, never needing to phone home. If push comes to shove, install a VM of an old OS, and it'll run just the same. Connecting old OSes to the internet is potentially a security risk. And, as we see here, Steam ain't gonna work on old OSes anyway. You're going to need to pirate the games you already bought if you want to play them again in 20 years.