Steam forcing updates to Win 10/11 to play games - do you actually "own" games bought through Steam?

[Kenrou]

"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."

Steam Support :: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support

help.steampowered.com

 

[Janus67]

Fine by me, they did the same for XP years ago.

 

[Nebulous]

Fine by me, they did the same for XP years ago.

Yup.

 

[EarthDog]

Anyone else think it was kind of them to support the OS(s) well past their support Window?


.... figured not.

 

[mackerel]

That's two questions in one. The ownership vs licensed is one part, and I think irrelevant to this. Can you still access and play those games? Yes. Nothing has really changed. If you have rights to those games, you still have rights to those games.

 

[Woomack]

I don't think it won't be possible to run Steam client. It won't be officially supported, but doesn't mean it won't work. I guess we will find out in some time. The same as current software is often not officially supported on older OS, but usually still works ... just sometimes without updates. Win7/8 isn't so much different than Win10/11. Many things are shared, some are different. It's not so big jump as from XP to 7. Anyway, we will see in some months.
On the other hand, MS already works on Win12 and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the next year. Win7 doesn't even have drivers for modern hardware (counting even some 5-6 year old devices). Win10 already has 8 years or something, so it's surprising they didn't do it earlier, especially since Win7 EOL was some years ago.

 

[freakdiablo]

I think this is more of a non issue. According to the last hardware survey, less than 2% of steam users are running 7/8.

 

[freeagent]

I think I quit running 7 as my daily back in 2015 or so. I am ok with it.

 

[stompah]

If you've got some legacy install of 7/8 are you playing a game which requires internet? Are you actively connecting that old of an OS to the internet?

If you are still rocking a 7/8 rig and playing Steam games that do not require internet to play, just set up a firewall and block Steam from connecting to it's servers.



I cannot imagine many people will be affected by this, and those that are do not have an alternative.