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Steam no longer supports Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 (www.neowin.net)

submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] 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)

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[-] 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.

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[-] spudwart@spudwart.com 19 points 10 months ago

Linux

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 10 months ago

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

The real answer is GoG.

[-] LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol 4 points 10 months ago

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.

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[-] Virulent@reddthat.com 2 points 10 months ago

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.

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[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 11 points 10 months ago

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.

[-] thehatfox@lemmy.world 15 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.

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 10 months ago

Why pay for DRM when there's a legal, user-friendly alternative? GoG is the best. Proof that we can still have nice things.

I don't go as far as to boycott Steam, but GoG is my first choice.

[-] Disposable_User@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

But, how about my funny and stupid reviews on the store page, and my useless badges and cards? /s

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[-] n3cr0@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I bet, we don't find a single Windows 8 user who uses Steam on that system. Similar applies to Win7.

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

Not anymore since it no longer works.

I was still using Steam on Windows 7 as late as last month. Losing access to Steam was one motivation to finally upgrade my computer.

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[-] wolfshadowheart@leminal.space 2 points 10 months ago

Win 8 was listed just under 1%

[-] Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago

Wrong, I used Steam under Win 7 from time to time until December. For some games it doesn't really matter and I use old machines for fun.

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[-] EddyBot@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure why people blame mostly Google for this
Microsoft stopped supporting them long time ago first, in case of Windows 7 it's almost 4 years now

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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024

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