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

[whispous]

If microsoft supported ancient ANCIENT applications endlessly, people and businesses would never ever EVER update the software solutions they use. They barely do it now.

[jagdtigger]

15 hours ago, whispous said:

If microsoft supported ancient ANCIENT applications endlessly, people and businesses would never ever EVER update the software solutions they use. They barely do it now.

Whether they support it or not ppl will use it. No-one trows out perfectly working machinery just because the OS is not supported anymore. (Especially now when the old stuff lasts longer and easier to repair than any of the newly released junk.)

[whispous]

45 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Whether they support it or not ppl will use it. No-one trows out perfectly working machinery just because the OS is not supported anymore. (Especially now when the old stuff lasts longer and easier to repair than any of the newly released junk.)

Unsupported OS means the machine is NOT "perfectly working"

[jagdtigger]

37 minutes ago, whispous said:

Unsupported OS means the machine is NOT "perfectly working"

So you think an OS net receiving updates anymore will make the whole machinery useless, just shows how little you know........

[whispous]

Just now, jagdtigger said:

So you think an OS net receiving updates anymore will make the whole machinery useless, just shows how little you know........

You said "perfectly" working.

[jagdtigger]

6 minutes ago, whispous said:

You said "perfectly" working.

Perfectly working == fulfills the role it was designed for. And as much as anyone likes to think otherwise more often than not updates arent part of the equation simply because 99% of the time those machines never see internet, sometimes not even a network.......

(For example I work at the production line by a car manufacturing company, some machinery still runs windows 95, granted it has its own isolated network.)

Edited January 1 by jagdtigger

[Middcore]

4 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Whether they support it or not ppl will use it. No-one trows out perfectly working machinery just because the OS is not supported anymore. 

In fact, vast amounts of hardware are thrown out for much less every day. 

[whispous]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

99% of the time those machines never see internet, sometimes not even a network.......

(For example I work at the production line by a car manufacturing company, some machinery still runs windows 95, granted it has its own isolated network.)

The context of this entire thread is that an online service is dropping support

[Kisai]

On 12/31/2023 at 11:42 AM, Vishera said:

The current version of DOSBOX already runs Win9x just fine.

I used that to install Windows 98 SE on my phone to play Half-Life and Age of Empires II on my phone.

No, it does not. To get Windows 95/95OSR2/98/98SE to run on DOSBOX you have to do a whole song and dance routine that you don't have to do for just DOS games.

 

But you're missing the point. DOSBOX runs Windows 3.1 without needing anything fancy. It does not run Windows 9x that way because the "DOS" Windows 9x runs on doesn't support the functionality needed to Run Windows 95. Keep in mind that Windows 95, 98, ME are still closer to Windows 3.1 (which run on top of DOS), and if you could just launch Windows 95 by typing "win" at the command prompt, it would be as easy to deal with as Windows 3.1 or any DOS game.

 

Presently that is not the case. You have to create hard drive and cd/floppy images for the OS and the game, install the game to the virtual hard drive, and then be limited by the size of the virtual hard drive. This is literately a complaint on the Dosbox forums that you can't access large hard drives, because Windows 9x can not access large hard drives. 

 

So if DosBox could fake being "Windows 95/98" DOS, and just run it and have access to the directory mounts the same way as it does for DOS, then running a 9x game would be much less of a pain, and being able to download a game from GOG that only works on 9x could then have a "requires official Microsoft Windows 95 to operate" package that could just be purchased once and left in the directory with the Win95 games.

 

Literately WINE is less of a pain in the ass.

[Donut417]

 

15 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

So you think an OS net receiving updates anymore will make the whole machinery useless, just shows how little you know........

For the average Joe Blow, yes. Because these people dont know any better. They know fuck all about PC and internet security and they will end up getting their Identity stolen or have some kinda of ransomware or what ever.  

[Lunar River]

19 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

No-one trows out perfectly working machinery just because the OS is not supported anymore.

You're right, people throw out perfectly working machinery even while the OS is supported just because people want next product

[Stahlmann]

Steam won't actively prevent you from installing or using Steam. They merely say they won't deliver new updates to these old versions. Part of it isn't even on Steam because they rely on an embedded version of Chrome which isn't supported on these older Windows versions either way.

 

While retro gaming might be a thing, Windows 7 isn't old enough to fall into that category. And even newer versions of Windows have excellent legacy software support.

[leadeater]

On 1/2/2024 at 1:13 AM, whispous said:

Unsupported OS means the machine is NOT "perfectly working"

If you tell a CNC to cut a line and it cuts the line, every time without error, then the machine is working perfectly. The OS and computer controlling it being old and crappy, not having support, is also still otherwise working perfectly unless not.

 

Functionality and operating aren't the same thing as support. When your laptop goes past the manufacture warranty period it's not considered "not perfectly working", it will however if you break the screen.

 

When a company like Steam drops OS support that means future software versions of Steam itself will not install, that doesn't mean older version will be prevented from working (or not yet).

[Vishera]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

If you tell a CNC to cut a line and it cuts the line, every time without error, then the machine is working perfectly. The OS and computer controlling it being old and crappy, not having support, is also still otherwise working perfectly unless not.

 

Functionality and operating aren't the same thing as support. When your laptop goes past the manufacture warranty period it's not considered "not perfectly working", it will however if you break the screen.

 

When a company like Steam drops OS support that means future software versions of Steam itself will not install, that doesn't mean older version will be prevented from working (or not yet).

As matter of fact Steam will autoupdate to the newest version and stop working,

They also have a warning message:

 

Lucky for me i was prepared for it, patched the steam client to prevent it from happening and removed the EOS message:

[Kid.Lazer]

So what I'm basically reading is:

 

"I'm sticking to Windows 7, come Hell or high water!"

*high water comes*

"Help, my old OS is losing support and is a travesty!"

 

Seriously people; Pick a lane.

 

I have an original DVD copy of Crysis, but it is non-functional on modern versions of Windows. (Yes, I'm sure it could be made to work with dll tomfoolery, but that's not the point) I politely contacted EA, told them my plight, and they gave me an Origin key free-of-charge. I now still have my hard-copy, but can also play it on Windows 11. I am grateful for them offering that to me, but they were in no way obligated to do so.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Vishera said:

As matter of fact Steam will autoupdate to the newest version and stop working,

They also have a warning message:

We'll have to see what actually happens in 249 days, I'd wager just aggressive wording that still amounts to "no more Steam client updates for you" rather than actually not working.

[whispous]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

We'll have to see what actually happens in 249 days, I'd wager just aggressive wording that still amounts to "no more Steam client updates for you" rather than actually not working.

Well, eventually they'll change the APIs and technologies for talking to the steam servers to authneticate logins and such, so really, if it is "it launches but no updates" then yea it will eventually just stop working

[Stahlmann]

15 hours ago, Kid.Lazer said:

So what I'm basically reading is:

 

"I'm sticking to Windows 7, come Hell or high water!"

*high water comes*

"Help, my old OS is losing support and is a travesty!"

 

Seriously people; Pick a lane.

 

I have an original DVD copy of Crysis, but it is non-functional on modern versions of Windows. (Yes, I'm sure it could be made to work with dll tomfoolery, but that's not the point) I politely contacted EA, told them my plight, and they gave me an Origin key free-of-charge. I now still have my hard-copy, but can also play it on Windows 11. I am grateful for them offering that to me, but they were in no way obligated to do so.

We're basically talking about 0,91% of the Steam user base that uses some version of Windows 7 or 8 so actually not even 1%. These are the people that will not upgrade no matter what.

 

Even on Windows 11 i can make pretty much all my childhood nostalgia games work. And the one game i can't get to work also doesn't work on Windows 7 either. So other than some niche commercial uses where the PC isn't even hooked up to the internet for security reasons (Steam isn't even a factor here) i see no reason to cling onto Windows 7 that hard.

 

I'll just refer to the quote in my signature because it fits in perfectly here.

[starsmine]

It baffles me that people want a machine running windows 7 to go online anyways. 
Its all fine and all to run windows 7... so long as its airgapped. Just like windows xp PCs or windows 9x/Dos machines that run machinery, its all air gapped, it never even looks at a WAN. 

[Donut417]

53 minutes ago, starsmine said:

It baffles me that people want a machine running windows 7 to go online anyways. 
Its all fine and all to run windows 7... so long as its airgapped. Just like windows xp PCs or windows 9x/Dos machines that run machinery, its all air gapped, it never even looks at a WAN. 

As people get older they like change even less.

[Kisai]

On 1/1/2024 at 11:16 PM, Lunar River said:

You're right, people throw out perfectly working machinery even while the OS is supported just because people want next product

I'm dealing with one of those scenarios. Client's RAID hardware is no longer supported by FreeBSD14, which means either replacing ALL the hardware (which has been in use since 2006) or being permanently stuck compiling all software because both the ability to download ports and the pre-compiled binaries for the OS immediately stop working a month before the OS goes EOL. 

 

Equivalent to Windows 10/11 not being able to install anything on the app store on EOL versions, just like Steam (on windows 7) not being able to install anything from the app store.

 

Honestly, there is a very obvious work around for Steam. Download everything NOW, and and back it up to a USB drive, including the Steam installer and the steam directory. Then disconnect it from the internet and never plug it back in. 

 

Come to think of it, while I don't think Valve is being unreasonable here, because consumer hardware should be replaced every 7 years just because of energy efficiency reasons, it is unreasonable to expect old hardware to operate in perpetuality. 

 

That FreeBSD 14 removing the RAID controller support, means if i wanted to keep using that hardware I would have to install a Linux OS on it, and that just means dealing with the idiotic incompatible way Linux distros deal with binary packages.

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

I'm dealing with one of those scenarios. Client's RAID hardware is no longer supported by FreeBSD14, which means either replacing ALL the hardware (which has been in use since 2006) or being permanently stuck compiling all software because both the ability to download ports and the pre-compiled binaries for the OS immediately stop working a month before the OS goes EOL. 

If it's hardware RAID then why even care? It'll have a boot time GUI or CLI interface and usually automatic disk rebuild if clean blank disk is swapped as replacement for failed.

 

Just avoid the hassle and accept having to reboot to manage the array, since needing to manage the array should be a once every 5 year event.

[Needfuldoer]

3 hours ago, starsmine said:

It baffles me that people want a machine running windows 7 to go online anyways. 

Never underestimate how tenacious the kicking-and-screaming crowd can be.

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, Needfuldoer said:

Never underestimate how tenacious the kicking-and-screaming crowd can be.

Steam has approx. 120.000.000 active users.

0.91% use W7/8 = 1.092.000 users

Now take the 1% of these users that are actively compaining on the internet = 10.092 users

(this percentage is obviously made up, my point being: it's a low percentage)

That's your crowd.

 

Let them kick and scream into the void. Because kicking and screaming into a tech forum or reddit will change so much about it.

Valve won't roll back any of this and invest millions into continued support because a few stubborn oafs refuse to update their long obsolete OS. The update to W10 or W11 was free for the longest time, too.

[ccnow]

There's a lot of back and forth here that seems entirely irrelevant.

 

The fact of the matter is that Steam can not justify the cost to support legacy operating systems in perpetuity. To argue anything other is nonsensical.

 

The many connections made to niche scenarios in which legacy operating systems serve a legitimate purpose have all been offline scenarios. Steam by nature requires an internet connection in order to function, which brings us to the other point being made over and over - that taking an unsupported, out of date operating system online is foolish if not outright negligent.

 

The position that it's not right for Steam to require new hardware to play your games seems to ignore that the Steam client by nature needs to connect to the internet, and that the inability to securely perform that functionality inherently hinders the ability for Steam to provide their services on your outdated hardware.

Where does this line end, by the way? I have old hardware that is no longer compatible with new operating systems - I'm still licensed to use them. Why is Sierra not updating my old version of Home Designer to work with Windows 11?

 

The only possible hitch I could see based on this thread is that Steam still sells software on their marketplace that doesn't play nice on new software. I don't think you should be entitled to anything if you've purchased this in the past, but seeing how they're sunsetting support of older operating systems that may still play this software, I think they should be removing those titles not compatible with their supported operating systems form the storefront.