Gamers who have been running Steam on Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 have less than a year left to switch to an updated PC. Valve’s software won’t run on computers with those older editions of Windows come Jan. 1, 2024, according to a Steam support page.
“The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows,” reads the support notice. “In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.”
In order to continue running Steam as well as any games or products purchased through the gaming platform, people will need to update to a more recent version of Windows, the company said.
Steam is dropping older versions of Windows after Microsoft earlier this year ended security updates and tech support for Windows 7 and 8.1. Microsoft began ending support for Windows 7 in 2020.
Only a small portion of Steam users are running the gaming platform on older Windows software, according to its February hardware and software survey. While more than 96% of Steam users are running Windows, most are on Windows 10 or Windows 11.
