According to the latest Steam hardware survey, 62.33% of Steam users were running Windows 10, while Windows 11 had a 32% market share. Windows 10 remains the most popular version of Windows, and it will be supported until October 2025. Windows 7 and 8.1 users with a valid license can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free by using Microsoft’s Media Creation tool. “In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.” “The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows,” Valve explained in a support note. Browse to the location Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.

It was time for Valve to move on, especially since Steam relies on Google Chrome features and that web browser (alongside Microsoft Edge) has also dropped support for Windows 7 and 8.1 earlier this year. On Windows 10 Professional in particular, you can open up group policy editor.

For Windows 8.1, that percentage drops to 0.34%. If Microsoft finally ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 back in January, there was still 1.52% of Steam users still running Windows 7 last month. The digital storefront will stop working on these unsupported versions of Windows after that date, and PC gamers who have yet to update to Windows 10 or Windows 11 will need to do it if they want to keep playing their games. Steam will drop support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 on January 1, 2024.

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