Steam Drops Support for Windows 7 and 8, macOS 10.13 and 10.14 Are Next

Steam has dropped support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 yesterday, January 1. The most popular digital storefront for games is encouraging users of these outdated versions of Windows, who represents less than 1% of the Steam user base, to upgrade to a newer version of the OS as soon as possible as they will no longer receive security updates.

“This change is required as core 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 10 and above,” Valve explained on a support page (via The Verge).

If Microsoft ended security updates and technical support for Windows 7 three years ago, the company was still offering an Extended Security Update program until January 2023, which is also when Microsoft officially dropped support for Windows 8.1. However, according to Statcounter, both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 still had a combined market share of 5,03% in December.

On February 15, 2024, Steam will also drop support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave). This is also due to the embedded version of Chrome no longer supporting older versions of macOS. Unfortunately, macOS 10.14 was the last version of the OS to support 32-bit apps and games, so if you upgrade to a new version of macOS, you’re going to lose access to a lot of old games that don’t offer 64-bit executables. The list of affected games includes popular Valve titles including the Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Portal series.

While Mac users just account for 1.63% of the Steam user base, the recent move to Apple Silicon may eventually make macOS a viable platform for gaming. We’ve recently seen big blockbuster games like Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding, or Lies of P being ported on macOS, and Apple’s latest M3 chips support advanced features such as hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and mesh shading. Apple also released a new Game Porting Toolkit that makes it easier for game developers to port the DirectX 12 games on macOS.