Valve has confirmed that the Steam client will stop working on Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7 starting January 1, 2024. Users will need to upgrade Windows to continue running Steam and any games purchased through steam.
“As of January 1, 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows.”
The reason to ditch the older version of Windows is Google Chrome. Some of the features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome. These features no longer work on older versions of Windows. Steam clients in the future will also require some feature and security updates that are only present in Windows 10 and above.
Any system that can run Windows 7 should run Windows 10 without any issues. So, you just need to update Windows to keep playing Steam games. Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 chip for running. Not many users use Windows 7 or Windows 8, so this move will not affect many people.
If you do not want to upgrade the OS of your system, you can stream your Steam library games using NVIDIA GeForce Now.
