Microsoft Deprecates Legacy DRM Services in Windows

It’s been a big year for deprecated Windows features, possibly the biggest ever. And you can now add legacy DRM services to the list. But there is one oddity here. This change appears to mostly impact out-of-date, non-supported Windows versions.

“Legacy DRM services, used by either Windows Media Player, Silverlight clients, Windows 7, or Windows 8 clients are deprecated,” the recently updated Deprecated features for Windows client page on Microsoft Learn notes.

The following services are impacted:

• Playback of protected content in the legacy Windows Media Player on Windows 7
• Playback of protected content in a Silverlight client and Windows 8 clients
• Streaming playback from a Silverlight client or Windows 8 client to an Xbox 360
• Playback of protected content ripped from a personal CD on Windows 7 clients using Windows Media Player

As you may know, Microsoft deprecates legacy features in Windows ahead of its removing them in some future version. Obviously, Microsoft isn’t going to update Windows 7 or 8.x to remove this functionality. But since the legacy Windows Media Player client is still available in Windows 10 and 11, which are still supported, this change could impact a very small number of users who still rely on this functionality. Microsoft, of course, has long since replaced the legacy Windows Media Player with a modern version of the app that was previously branded as Zune, Groove, and Xbox.

Legacy DRM services joins Paint 3D, Adobe Type 1 font support, DirectAccess, NTLM, Driver Verifier GUI, the NPLogonNotify and NPPasswordChangeNotify APIs, TLS server authentication, Test Base for Microsoft 365, Windows Mixed Reality, Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Edge, legacy console mode, Windows speech recognition, Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office, Steps recorder, the Tips app, Computer Browser, WebDAV, Remote Mailslots, Timeline for Microsoft Entra accounts, VBScript, and WordPad on the long list of apps and services that Microsoft has deprecated since completing Windows 11 version 23H2 one year ago.

One thing it hasn’t deprecated is Control Panel, a feature that, like the Registry, will likely outlive us all.