Steam paves way for dropping Win XP and Vista for 2019

[LAwLz]

It's in threads like these I am reminded that the majority of users here have no idea how computers work, from a software (or hardware for that matter) perspective. 

And also that a lot of the same people have the mentality of "stop liking what I don't like". 

 

Pretty sad to see people cheering on that some other people will have issues. Wishing harm to others is a pretty despicable thing, but it seems pretty common these days. 

 

 

Worth mentioning that Valve can't legally remove the DRM on games. It is explicitly illegal to do so. 

 

 

Edit:

I think this goes to show what a crappy system Steam is. This is when the whole "you don't own the games you have bought" bites you in the ass. Valve can legally block access to games you have paid for. The game works fine on your system, but the middle-man Valve has put in place might not. 

DRM sure is a shitty thing. 

[Sir Asvald]

49 minutes ago, Swatson said:

This.

 

XP is no longer secure, plus they have to drop support at some point. Unless you think supporting XP in 2030 is a smart idea.

Support for XP ended back in 2014. LOL 

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

It's in threads like these I am reminded that the majority of users here have no idea how computers work, from a software (or hardware for that matter) perspective. 

And also that a lot of the same people have the mentality of "stop liking what I don't like". 

 

Pretty sad to see people cheering on that some other people will have issues. Wishing harm to others is a pretty despicable thing, but it seems pretty common these days. 

 

I wouldnt bash them for liking a product, I just bash XP users because of the vulnerabilities. Bashing in concern to their security. 

[Velcade]

Stop supporting seems fine, but I can't wrap my head around them completely disabling the steam client for those operating systems.  Most companies stop support for older tech but they don't render it unusable.  Can you imagine if Windows decided to brick all of the XP computers in 2014 because they are no longer supporting the OS.

 

 

[AlTech]

Finally lol.

[AlTech]

9 minutes ago, Velcade said:

Stop supporting seems fine, but I can't wrap my head around them completely disabling the steam client for those operating systems.  Most companies stop support for older tech but they don't render it unusable.  Can you imagine if Windows decided to brick all of the XP computers in 2014 because they are no longer supporting the OS.

 

 

Hospitals, health care and businesses rely on Windows XP and IE. The Pentagon, DOD, Navy and Army rely on Windows XP. They've only just started migrating to Windows 10.

[Trixanity]

I just recalled Blizzard also dropped support so Valve wasn't the first. By dropped support I mean preventing their software from running on old operating systems.

[Canada EH]

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

Ubuntu 4.10

there are 100's of other distro's

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Canada EH said:

there are 100's of other distro's

All right, name a distro release that was around in 2004 and runs Steam.

[Dabombinable]

58 minutes ago, Sauron said:

All right, name a distro release that was around in 2004 and runs Steam.

I can name a far newer distro that could run Steam and still works on Pentium III. Lubuntu 15.10. The "we are rather lazy" chromium based parts however of course don't work sine they require SSE2.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

I can name a far newer distro that could run Steam and still works on Pentium III. Lubuntu 15.10. The "we are rather lazy" chromium based parts however of course don't work sine they require SSE2.

That's not the point - game incompatibilities usually don't come from the hardware but from the software. If a game was made with windows 2000 in mind and it ran only on 2000 and xp, even if the P3 could run windows 10 the game still wouldn't run even if the hardware is the same. Even if you had bought a linux game on Steam you probably couldn't run it on a linux distro from that era, the point being that it's perfectly normal to phase out support for xp and that linux isn't necessarily better on this front.

[vanished]

I can't believe they were still supporting it... this is long overdue.  As one of a very long list of reasons why, I'll point to the fact Microsoft themselves doesn't even support XP anymore.

[DeScruff]

I don't get why this is a good thing?
Unless there was something related to XP and Vista holding Steam back (Which I doubt), this is a bad thing, as it just means anyone who is using a retro gaming PC is getting the shaft.
You know that hypothetical a lot of people throw around. "If Valve ever one day goes belly up, all your games are gone." - Well thats whats happening to XP machines, and they aren't even offering a way for those people to get their games other then "download em and install them now or else,  and NO you cannot just download the files from a modern secure computer and activate/install them on the older computer."

Just a heads up. Some older PC games made in the early 2000s (right in the XP era)  that are for sale on Steam right now, have issues with modern hardware and OS. Fallout 3 is an infamous one with machines with more then 3 cores. (Or at least I remember needing to disable one of my cores in my then new Phenom II x4 or else I'd get random crashes)
Dungeon Siege was another one I remember. Enabling Real time shadows on a modern system apparently kills performance, while it runs buttery smooth on 10 year old machines.
I recall a couple of games I had back in the day had issues when I moved to Win7 when it came to AA and Shadows. Some had weird texture glitches.

Warcraft III flat out didnt work till Blizzard patched it - But patching a game when its 14 years old is not the norm.

[Dabombinable]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

That's not the point - game incompatibilities usually don't come from the hardware but from the software. If a game was made with windows 2000 in mind and it ran only on 2000 and xp, even if the P3 could run windows 10 the game still wouldn't run even if the hardware is the same. Even if you had bought a linux game on Steam you probably couldn't run it on a linux distro from that era, the point being that it's perfectly normal to phase out support for xp and that linux isn't necessarily better on this front.

I'll ask you this. If the games themselves support an OS, why shouldn't Steam itself also support it? You bought the game and therefore should be able to use it under any of the OS it was designed to run under.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I'm wonder if they're gonna allow users download the games they bought that aren't supported by Windows 7 or newer, free of DRM. Sort of like what they would do if Valve were to go under.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/541907867767701145/

[Andreas Lilja]

On 6/13/2018 at 7:00 PM, Misanthrope said:

I know you can eventually configure it to play it, I said "installs and works by default" meaning without you having to fail, go online, read a bunch of forum posts done by the community, not Beth support and then get it to work.

 

By default, afaik it just doesn't works. So Steam would now be selling a product that definitively does not work under any of their supported circumstances without community based workarounds.

 

EDIT: Yep, they even still have this very notice on the store page for it:

Takes like 5-10 minutes to get it fixed, once you find the relevant Steam guide, which is posted everywhere.

 

Recently played on W10 (~300 hours) and didn't have a single crash, even with a boatload of mods.

[vanished]

3 hours ago, Sypran said:

I don't get why this is a good thing?
Unless there was something related to XP and Vista holding Steam back (Which I doubt), this is a bad thing, as it just means anyone who is using a retro gaming PC is getting the shaft.

It does hold them back because it means resources are spent supporting an obsolete system that could be better used elsewhere

3 hours ago, Sypran said:

You know that hypothetical a lot of people throw around. "If Valve ever one day goes belly up, all your games are gone." - Well thats whats happening to XP machines, and they aren't even offering a way for those people to get their games other then "download em and install them now or else,  and NO you cannot just download the files from a modern secure computer and activate/install them on the older computer."

the solution is to not use an obsolete OS

3 hours ago, Sypran said:

Just a heads up. Some older PC games made in the early 2000s (right in the XP era)  that are for sale on Steam right now, have issues with modern hardware and OS. Fallout 3 is an infamous one with machines with more then 3 cores. (Or at least I remember needing to disable one of my cores in my then new Phenom II x4 or else I'd get random crashes)

Disabling cores either on a program level in Task Manager, or on a hardware level in the BIOS is trivial, in case that's necessary.

3 hours ago, Sypran said:

Dungeon Siege was another one I remember. Enabling Real time shadows on a modern system apparently kills performance, while it runs buttery smooth on 10 year old machines.
I recall a couple of games I had back in the day had issues when I moved to Win7 when it came to AA and Shadows. Some had weird texture glitches.

Warcraft III flat out didnt work till Blizzard patched it - But patching a game when its 14 years old is not the norm.

I have to wonder how they run in Wine... for the longest time, it was just accepted that you had to take a performance hit due to the translation, which made sense, but I've heard that more recently, some games actually run faster in Wine on Linux than they run on Windows natively due to the modern remakes of some libraries Wine uses being more efficient than the originals or something.

[Trixanity]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I have to wonder how they run in Wine... for the longest time, it was just accepted that you had to take a performance hit due to the translation, which made sense, but I've heard that more recently, some games actually run faster in Wine on Linux than they run on Windows natively due to the modern remakes of some libraries Wine uses being more efficient than the originals or something.

That's probably true but the opposite is also very true quite often.

 

Maybe Wine should release on Windows to provide a compatibility layer for older games. Perhaps it could even help with this. I mean you can run Steam inside wine already. Depends on the checks Valve puts in place.

[Andreas Lilja]

4 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I'm wonder if they're gonna allow users download the games they bought that aren't supported by Windows 7 or newer, free of DRM. Sort of like what they would do if Valve were to go under.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/541907867767701145/

Someone would buy them before they go under.

 

Hell it could easily become a cooperative, if everyone only shelled like 2-3$

 

[mr moose]

17 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 Valve can legally block access to games you have paid for.

Maybe in shitty countries,  but they can't do this in Australia.   Doing anything that causes the product to not function as intended/advertised is illegal and valve would either have to remedy the situation (make it DRM free) or refund the customer.  If by this move valve makes any games purchased on the steam network unplayable they must under Australian consumer law remedy the situation. 

[Bananasplit_00]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

If those "problems" mean Steam can't even start, I don't see a distinction...

Sure, this seemed more like they would be actively blocking it though than it breaking but it could be something like that that's the underlying reason for this

[asus killer]

and then they complain about piracy.. 

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Maybe in shitty countries,  but they can't do this in Australia.   Doing anything that causes the product to not function as intended/advertised is illegal and valve would either have to remedy the situation (make it DRM free) or refund the customer.  If by this move valve makes any games purchased on the steam network unplayable they must under Australian consumer law remedy the situation. 

And they definitely know now that they aren't exempt from Australia law, and have to do business over here just like all other overseas companies.

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

I'll ask you this. If the games themselves support an OS, why shouldn't Steam itself also support it? You bought the game and therefore should be able to use it under any of the OS it was designed to run under.

You bought a game on Steam knowing very well that it depended on Steam itself to run. The Steam release of said game is designed to run under Steam, otherwise it couldn't be on the store. So no, the software you bought was not designed to run on, say, windows xp - it was released on Steam and also happened to only run with windows xp underneath. The correct question to ask is "why are there games on Steam that don't run on every supported platform?". Don't want Steam? There are DRM-free alternative stores - whether the developer decides to release their game on them or not is not up to Valve - as well as physical copies from when the game was originally released.

 

Expecting continued support for a 17 year old system AND a stream of new features is unreasonable, especially since MS itself doesn't support it anymore. Things like this are implicit in a centralized store like Steam, and the problem is not that Valve won't support ancient systems but rather that they don't demand compatibility updates from developers who choose to sell their product on their store. Because of its central position in the market and the streamlined platform they offer, Valve would be in a unique position to force the devs' hand or at least offer some sort of sandboxing that would allow continued compatibility with any system as long as Steam itself runs on it - and they choose to waste that opportunity, which is sad.

[Dabombinable]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

You bought a game on Steam knowing very well that it depended on Steam itself to run. The Steam release of said game is designed to run under Steam, otherwise it couldn't be on the store. So no, the software you bought was not designed to run on, say, windows xp - it was released on Steam and also happened to only run with windows xp underneath. The correct question to ask is "why are there games on Steam that don't run on every supported platform?". Don't want Steam? There are DRM-free alternative stores - whether the developer decides to release their game on them or not is not up to Valve - as well as physical copies from when the game was originally released.

 

Expecting continued support for a 17 year old system AND a stream of new features is unreasonable, especially since MS itself doesn't support it anymore. Things like this are implicit in a centralized store like Steam, and the problem is not that Valve won't support ancient systems but rather that they don't demand compatibility updates from developers who choose to sell their product on their store. Because of its central position in the market and the streamlined platform they offer, Valve would be in a unique position to force the devs' hand or at least offer some sort of sandboxing that would allow continued compatibility with any system as long as Steam itself runs on it - and they choose to waste that opportunity, which is sad.

I actually bought all bar Ark Survival in store, and when I first started buying games for my legacy rig the Steam reuirement was a surprise as:

• The system requirements ranged from Pentium II to early Pentium 4 (which dual PIII can match)
• The "requires Steam+an online connection" was only in tiny print on the back in barely legible fine print
• Are you trying to tell me that none of these games were designed to run on Windows XP?
  

And Windows XP systems were still a thing 9 years ago, and for a while after Windows 7's release.