Steam is dropping support for Windows 7 and macOS Mohave (and older), which could break or prevent downloading purchased games

[TetraSky]

I'm not surprised considering Steam uses chrome embedded framework for it's webstore on the app. Chrome dropped support in January 2023 for Windows 7. There's no reason for Steam to push support even further when other parts of the software are already no longer supported.

Windows 10 came out over 8 years ago. There's little to no reasons to still be on Windows 7 considering there was no special requirement to move to Windows 10, unlike 11. Unless there's a specific piece of software that only works with Win7 that you absolutely need... In which case, don't blame Valve for your software never getting an update.

[Needfuldoer]

This is just like when they dropped support for XP and Vista in 2019. Same teeth-gnashing, different year.

 

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6E66-54EC-3EFC-283C

 

Quote

Windows XP and Windows Vista Support

As of January 1 2019, Steam officially stopped supporting the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. 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 newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 7 and above.

 

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

All we want is to be able to install and play games we bought.

You can still play those games. You just need a computer that is compatible with Steam. 

[Sauron]

28 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

You can still play those games. You just need a computer that is compatible with Steam. 

No... if those games only work on 7 then you can't play them any more.

[Middcore]

Pretty sure Valve can't legally give people DRM-free copies of games without the OK of the respective publishers. If we're talking about games that won't run on anything past Win7, then I imagine that communicating with those publishers to get permission would not be a trivial thing. 

 

I would be interested to see an actual list of such games. 

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No... if those games only work on 7 then you can't play them any more.

Ok see, that’s why comparability mode is

important and it’s a feature Windows 11 still has. 

[Needfuldoer]

21 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No... if those games only work on 7 then you can't play them any more.

How much software runs on Windows 7 but not 10 and 11?

 

Mac users have it worse, with 32-bit Intel Mac binary support dropping several years ago. (And I don't think Rosetta 2 handles them on Apple Silicon Macs.) But how many users and how many titles fall into those categories?

[Sauron]

32 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

How much software runs on Windows 7 but not 10 and 11?

Maybe not a whole lot right now but as windows changes it will get worse. The point here is that there's no commitment from valve to address this problem as it manifests.

37 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Ok see, that’s why comparability mode is

important and it’s a feature Windows 11 still has. 

Compatibility mode doesn't always work. There might also be games that were designed for systems older than 7 that work in 7's compatibility mode but not 10's.

 

If there truly are no games to which this applies then I wonder why Valve wouldn't just say so and promise to address such cases should they ever manifest...

43 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Mac users have it worse, with 32-bit Intel Mac binary support dropping several years ago. (And I don't think Rosetta 2 handles them on Apple Silicon Macs.) But how many users and how many titles fall into those categories?

It doesn't really matter how small the user base for those games is; Valve is actively making games those people purchased unplayable after the fact, which sounds like something that ought to be illegal if it isn't already. All it would take to fix the issue is to remove steam drm from those games, so people could keep playing them regardless of steam support for their system.

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, da na said:

Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised they kept Win 7 support alive for 3 years after the OS was killed off. The GPU companies already dropped 7 support a couple months ago at this point, sad to see but at the same time, glad to see Steam hung on for a while.

 

It's very likely the only reason it's been around this long is because of the underlying CEF framework they basically entirely switched the UI over to. The previous UI was all 32-bit stuff that was different on Mac and Windows. But CEF's basically 64-bit only.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3791506516133298583/

Quote

Update Chromium/CEF to a supported version

Currently Steam runs on version 85 of Chromium, which is considerably out of date. Consider updating to a newer version; according to the Wikipedia article about CEF (the framework used to add Chromium to Steam) the current version is 108 which for holdouts should still support Windows 7.

This was posted in MARCH of this THIS year.

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/185534985/sunsetting-support-for-windows-7-8-1-in-early-2023?hl=en

Quote

Chrome 109 is the last version of Chrome that will support Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2.  Chrome 110 (tentatively scheduled for release on February 7th, 2023) is the first version of Chrome that requires Windows 10 or later. You’ll need to ensure your device is running Windows 10 or later to continue receiving future Chrome releases.

https://groups.google.com/g/cef-announce/c/Lpw5PP5LPNc

Quote

Starting with M110, Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 are no longer supported platforms and Windows 10 or later will be required to run CEF-based applications. Please see the related Chromium announcement here for additional information.

That links back to the above

 

Basically 100% certainty that this is driven by the CEF used in Steam.

 

As for 32-bit games vs 64-bit games. A lot of 32-bit Windows XP era games don't even work on Windows 7, never mind 8/10/11.  At some point Steam is going to need to invoke the same linux wrappers used to run games on the Steam Deck for 32-bit games built before Windows Vista/7 because of Microsoft's own breaking backwards compatibility.

 

Fortunately, and this applies to Games only, not applications, many games don't really invoke the Windows UI or other special libraries unless they have network functionality. So many games can be wrapped with little functionality loss, and anything that explicitly relies on that functionality, can still be virtualized in Windows XP or Windows 98.

 

Orange Box, which is basically the game package that "Steam" launched with, came out in the early Vista era. So Steam itself has pretty much been sitting in that Vista/7 support window since it's inception.

 

[Thaldor]

32 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Maybe not a whole lot right now but as windows changes it will get worse. The point here is that there's no commitment from valve to address this problem as it manifests.

Compatibility mode doesn't always work. There might also be games that were designed for systems older than 7 that work in 7's compatibility mode but not 10's.

 

If there truly are no games to which this applies then I wonder why Valve wouldn't just say so and promise to address such cases should they ever manifest...

It doesn't really matter how small the user base for those games is; Valve is actively making games those people purchased unplayable after the fact, which sounds like something that ought to be illegal if it isn't already. All it would take to fix the issue is to remove steam drm from those games, so people could keep playing them regardless of steam support for their system.

So, not only should YouTube start editing videos to fit the viewing standards a decade later the videos were uploaded but also edit them so they are advertiser friendly without the consent of the uploader?

As in you're demanding Valve to not only open up the games in Steam and remove the DRM from them (the few that actually use CEG, most of the games don't use it but have their own DRM salt in them), without the consent of the developer, but also start coding and editing them so they will work on modern systems. That's pretty damn dark shit right there.

 

If it wasn't clear yet, Valve is doing nothing to the games, they are just (most likely) starting to update the Chrome/Chromium based core of the Steam and Google dropped the Windows 7 / macOS Mohave support from that core earlier this year. It's pretty much asked from Valve to either halt their development or start building support for Google products so that "retro gamers" (as stated earlier I don't consider Win7 games retro, there's probably single digit percentage of them that don't really work on Win10/11 and most that don't work didn't work on Win7 either because incompetent developers) don't need to do shit to uphold their systems.

Also the Chrome/Chromium base seems to more link into the Steam store side so if Google does huge changes and breaks everything for Win7 then probably still on Win7 running people will lose the storefront of the Steam. The library seems to run on that but use much lower level stuff so it might be good to go for long time for Win7 users. And this seems to be the same case as with Windows XP but without the hard hammer dropping just yet (you can install and even run the newest version of Steam on Windows XP 64-bit. but you will be unable to install any games because Steam blocks access to the servers from WinXP machines, so, all you must do is download the games on different PC and transfer them to the XP machine and, voilá, they should work).

[OhioYJ]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

No... if those games only work on 7 then you can't play them any more.

I still play games on my Windows 11 PC that claim to be Windows XP only?

[BrandonLatzig]

25 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I still play games on my Windows 11 PC that claim to be Windows XP only?

yes, for instance you can play diablo 1 with compatibility mode

[Sauron]

23 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

So, not only should YouTube start editing videos to fit the viewing standards a decade later the videos were uploaded but also edit them so they are advertiser friendly without the consent of the uploader?

What does youtube have to do with this? When have you last purchased a youtube video?

24 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

As in you're demanding Valve to not only open up the games in Steam and remove the DRM from them (the few that actually use CEG, most of the games don't use it but have their own DRM salt in them)

Non-steam DRM is not a problem here. Only steam DRM stops working when you can't install steam. And they could absolutely, if not remove it, at least provide a DRM spoofer that pretends to be steam for those specific games.

28 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

without the consent of the developer, but also start coding and editing them so they will work on modern systems. That's pretty damn dark shit right there.

That's not what I said at all. I'm talking about allowing those games to keep working on systems they have always worked on and no longer will exclusively because you won't be able to run steam.

30 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

If it wasn't clear yet, Valve is doing nothing to the games, they are just (most likely) starting to update the Chrome/Chromium based core of the Steam and Google dropped the Windows 7 / macOS Mohave support from that core earlier this year. It's pretty much asked from Valve to either halt their development or start building support for Google products so that "retro gamers" (as stated earlier I don't consider Win7 games retro, there's probably single digit percentage of them that don't really work on Win10/11 and most that don't work didn't work on Win7 either because incompetent developers) don't need to do shit to uphold their systems.

Also the Chrome/Chromium base seems to more link into the Steam store side so if Google does huge changes and breaks everything for Win7 then probably still on Win7 running people will lose the storefront of the Steam. The library seems to run on that but use much lower level stuff so it might be good to go for long time for Win7 users. And this seems to be the same case as with Windows XP but without the hard hammer dropping just yet (you can install and even run the newest version of Steam on Windows XP 64-bit. but you will be unable to install any games because Steam blocks access to the servers from WinXP machines, so, all you must do is download the games on different PC and transfer them to the XP machine and, voilá, they should work).

None of this is relevant to the discussion. I don't care about steam being available for windows 7 in perpetuity. I just want games that were purchased on steam and only work on windows 7 to not stop working just because steam will no longer be available for that system.

 

Nobody would accept this for any other kind of product. But for some reason we have collectively accepted that digital purchases don't mean anything and that digital goods you paid for can be taken away from you for no reason at any point.

30 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I still play games on my Windows 11 PC that claim to be Windows XP only?

Good for you? I didn't say this applies to all old games...?

[ReanimationXP]

2 hours ago, BrandonLatzig said:

yes, for instance you can play diablo 1 with compatibility mode

I don't know what hoops you had to jump through to achieve this, but it wasn't just compatibility mode.  I specifically had to create a Win 7 VM to run Diablo 1, my copy, years ago when I upgraded to 10.  Things these games rely on, like Intel Indio and DirectDraw, will become outdated and no longer run on modern versions of Windows.. so even if the game is supported, the frameworks it's written on, at some point, will not be.  It's the perfect example of a game that will only run on Win 7, and is the reason entire projects like DevilutionX exist to rewrite it.

 

Pretty much every single one of you who have posted an argument against this don't understand a fundamental part of what's wrong, probably because you either didn't read or don't understand the basics of steam installation and DRM, and I don't have the energy to correct all of you. Emulation is not a solution if you cannot get the game in the first place because you can't install the client.  For any DRM'd games, installed or not, if the client doesn't run, the DRM doesn't either. You cannot install Steam on an unsupported platform if the first thing it does is update.  Sure you can install an "old version" from some sketchy site, maybe that has been patched to not update or something, but then how do you know it's Steam and not just a credential harvester? There's no way to tell without being a malware reverse engineer.

 

No one has accused Valve of removing access to games, at least not yet.  If they did, I'm sure it wouldn't be "malicious".  I said it demonstrates a lack of care, and a breach of trust.  You could argue it is negligent.  It also opens the doors to more happening. If you can't install or update, and at some point can't even log into Steam on a particular OS, and a game only supports up to that OS, and you can only download the game on the Steam client, what motivation is there for Valve to not free up some server space and delete them all?  Under any normal circumstance, you literally can't download it at that point, so why would they keep it around?

 

Valve owns the safe that something you bought lives in, and they're taking away the key, or at least aren't giving you a new one when it breaks, when their responsibility and the trust relationship there is that if you paid for access to the key, they provide it. You might still "own" it on paper, but if you can't get at it then they've stolen from you!  Intentional or not.  As I stated in the opening, macOS users have it the worst.  You may have to buy a machine built within the last 7 years to even be able to access what you paid for.  That isn't Valve's fault, but should be taken into consideration.  Making things available on SteamCMD without a GUI would not be hard.  It makes no use of Chromium.

 

Sauron seems to be one of the only ones here who actually gets the full picture. Appreciate you fighting the good fight.  I don't know why so many people are so complacent.. even HAPPY to let mega corps take away their paid property.  This is why Louis Rossman rightly says piracy is justified.  His latest video about Sony doing this echos EXACTLY this situation.
 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

I don't care about steam being available for windows 7 in perpetuity. I just want games that were purchased on steam and only work on windows 7 to not stop working just because steam will no longer be available for that system.

 

Nobody would accept this for any other kind of product. But for some reason we have collectively accepted that digital purchases don't mean anything and that digital goods you paid for can be taken away from you for no reason at any point.

Exactly. With one small caveat. We still need a way to download, and if the DRM is still there, it needs to work.  Whether that's the full version of the client, or some back-asswards way like SteamCMD with no GUI, I don't care.  If I have to drive to the next town to get a new copy of my safe key.. at least Valve is still honoring their promise of giving me access for life.

[thevictor390]

19 hours ago, ReanimationXP said:

Applying this to another sector - imagine if you could no longer access your bank account or your stocks unless you purchased a new Mac at minimum every 7 years, and even then, possibly had to spin up a VM to do so.

This actually happens. Eventually your old OS does not support modern browsers, which means it does not support modern encryption standards, which means it cannot access modern websites. Already Windows Chrome is releasing no more versions for Windows 7.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Thaldor said:

So, not only should YouTube start editing videos to fit the viewing standards a decade later the videos were uploaded but also edit them so they are advertiser friendly without the consent of the uploader?

 

Do realize this is exactly what they did. Twice. Once with 4:3 to 16:9 and once with Flash to MP4. They didn't trim anything no, but they did re-encode and change underlying codecs twice, and the next change is to AV1.

 

They also analyze the videos to place ads, where they used to never even have ads on videos unless you were opted into it 3 years ago. That is QUITE a long time for things to change.

 

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

This actually happens. Eventually your old OS does not support modern browsers, which means it does not support modern encryption standards, which means it cannot access modern websites. Already Windows Chrome is releasing no more versions for Windows 7.

The 64-bit switch is only going to happen once. What is more concerning is the potential for fragmentation along CPU types. Windows and MacOS handle "fat binaries" differently, and unlike OS X, which can pretty much run Rosetta indefinitely If Apple maintains it, Windows has NEVER done that. Windows applications compiled and optimized for Intel/AMD 64 bit chips aren't going to magically run on ARM chips, and ARM chips have a lot of internal fragmentation of their own, and didn't nail down a 64-bit ABI until pretty recently too.

 

A lot of inertia had to be overcome. Chrome and Firefox resisted building 64-bit versions for such a long time to keep compatibility with XP, and eventually they just had to drop support for it. A lot of other software (eg DOSBOX is notorious trying to run on old OS's as long as possible) only ends up dropping support for things once the OS has dropped support for the feature (eg cd-audio support on real CD drives.) And even then, third parties still go out of their way to fix SDL 1.0 to keep it working when CD-audio was removed from SDL2.

 

We wouldn't have this inertia in the first place if the CPU manufacturers were a lot more open about the direction they are taking things. Like we should have had a hard switch over to 64-bit with the Athlon64 (2003)/Core2Duo(2006) in 2006. But no...

Vista came out in 2007 with 32-bit and 64-bit layers (XP was released in 64-bit but not thru sources people could get it)

Firefox didn't release a 64-bit version of Firefox until 2015

Chrome didn't release a 64-bit version of Chrome until 2010 for Linux but not til 2014 for Windows.

 

That 7-9 year gap was inexcusable, and an entire computer generation cycle went by in that time.

 

So complaining about Steam finally dropping Windows 7 support and 32-bit support, is kind of like the last big hold out to 64-bit mode being standard and Microsoft dropping standard 32-bit support from Windows.

 

 

[thevictor390]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The 64-bit switch is only going to happen once. What is more concerning is the potential for fragmentation along CPU types. Windows and MacOS handle "fat binaries" differently, and unlike OS X, which can pretty much run Rosetta indefinitely If Apple maintains it, Windows has NEVER done that. Windows applications compiled and optimized for Intel/AMD 64 bit chips aren't going to magically run on ARM chips, and ARM chips have a lot of internal fragmentation of their own, and didn't nail down a 64-bit ABI until pretty recently too.

 

A lot of inertia had to be overcome. Chrome and Firefox resisted building 64-bit versions for such a long time to keep compatibility with XP, and eventually they just had to drop support for it. A lot of other software (eg DOSBOX is notorious trying to run on old OS's as long as possible) only ends up dropping support for things once the OS has dropped support for the feature (eg cd-audio support on real CD drives.) And even then, third parties still go out of their way to fix SDL 1.0 to keep it working when CD-audio was removed from SDL2.

 

We wouldn't have this inertia in the first place if the CPU manufacturers were a lot more open about the direction they are taking things. Like we should have had a hard switch over to 64-bit with the Athlon64 (2003)/Core2Duo(2006) in 2006. But no...

Vista came out in 2007 with 32-bit and 64-bit layers (XP was released in 64-bit but not thru sources people could get it)

Firefox didn't release a 64-bit version of Firefox until 2015

Chrome didn't release a 64-bit version of Chrome until 2010 for Linux but not til 2014 for Windows.

 

That 7-9 year gap was inexcusable, and an entire computer generation cycle went by in that time.

 

So complaining about Steam finally dropping Windows 7 support and 32-bit support, is kind of like the last big hold out to 64-bit mode being standard and Microsoft dropping standard 32-bit support from Windows.

 

 

Windows does have a Rosetta equivalent. Fire up task manager on an arm-based Windows device and you'll see several apps are running in x86 compatibility mode. You can also run non-native apps yourself. Compatibility and performance are not as good as Rosetta.

That said my statement had nothing to do with 32 bit support. You can still get 32-bit Windows 11.

[kirashi]

21 hours ago, ReanimationXP said:

This move demonstrates a lack of care and doesn't make sense to me

Uh, what? Microsoft discontinued Mainstream support for Windows 7 on Jan 13, 2015 - if you want to point the finger at a company for "demonstrating a lack of care" point it at the OS developer first, not third party (to Windows) software developers.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-7

[igormp]

16 hours ago, porina said:

SteamOS is currently based on Arch as far as I can tell. Arch is listed as the biggest single slice at 0.15%, but compared to the Linux total of 1.91% it is very small beans.

You can filter out by linux only, SteamOS is called "Holo":

Almost half of all linux userbase.

 

Other than that, this thread just seems like unnecessary drama for me, the Win 7 userbase is pretty negligible and the OS itself has lost support for tons of other shit years ago.

[BrandonLatzig]

38 minutes ago, igormp said:

You can filter out by linux only, SteamOS is called "Holo":

Almost half of all linux userbase.

 

Other than that, this thread just seems like unnecessary drama for me, the Win 7 userbase is pretty negligible and the OS itself has lost support for tons of other shit years ago.

honestly I wouldnt be surprised if most win7 users are like
People playing games on work computers or something

[Vishera]

I am prepared for Doomsday

I modified the steam client to not update and removed the annoying red message that warns you of "End of Support".

I also made an installer with these modifications for use on other Windows 7 installations.

 

7 hours ago, kirashi said:

Uh, what? Microsoft discontinued Mainstream support for Windows 7 on Jan 13, 2015 - if you want to point the finger at a company for "demonstrating a lack of care" point it at the OS developer first, not third party (to Windows) software developers.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-7

The thing is that you won't be able to play games on the platform they were released for.

This is messed up.

 

10 hours ago, thevictor390 said:

This actually happens. Eventually your old OS does not support modern browsers, which means it does not support modern encryption standards, which means it cannot access modern websites. Already Windows Chrome is releasing no more versions for Windows 7.

That's not the case with Windows 7, Windows 7 supports modern encryption standards,

And in fact there are forks of chrome that continue to support Windows 7 such as the supermium project.

[jagdtigger]

What a sad day, despite its age w7 still looks and feels like a modern OS..... (unlike its lesser descendants)

[Mihle]

@ReanimationXP Take things one step at the time, even if they drop support for Windows 7, "may remove windows 7 games from steam libraries later" is not and valid argument against it, other things you mentioned is, but not that one, as it's a seperate thing. Complain and range about that, if it happens.

 

I have an online only game in my steam Library that has been unplayable for years because developer shut it down, it's still in steam library and I can still download it.

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

What a sad day, despite its age w7 still looks and feels like a modern OS..... (unlike its lesser descendants)

And it doesn't consume 3GB of RAM on idle for no reason.