PC avid gamers, it’s time to usher in the brand new 12 months by lastly retiring that outdated Home windows OS. Valve introduced in an official weblog publish that Steam would not help Windows 7, 8, and eight.1 after January 1, 2024.
In response to the official Steam blog post, after that date present Steam Consumer installations on these named operating systems will not be receiving any updates, together with safety updates. Steam will even not supply technical help or be capable to assure Steam performance after that date.
In response to the newest Steam hardware survey, solely about 0.89% of Steam customers nonetheless have Home windows 7, 8, and eight.1 put in, which is across the identical quantity as these with Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics playing cards. Not an insignificant quantity contemplating that there are 31 million on-line Steam customers, but it surely’s nonetheless a slightly small inhabitants so the dropped help is sensible on that entrance.
Valve beneficial customers replace their OS as “core options in Steam depend on an embedded model of Google Chrome” and that “future variations of Steam would require Home windows function and safety updates solely current in Windows 10 and above.” The publish additionally cites common safety dangers concerned in preserving these working techniques put in with out correct safety updates to deal with them. That is sound recommendation contemplating that Microsoft ended help for Home windows 7 in 2020 and Windows 8.1 in 2023.
Microsoft ending OS help may spell catastrophe
Home windows 7, 8, and eight.1 aren’t the one ones which have gotten the boot from Microsoft, because the tech big is planning on ending help for Windows 10 in 2025.
Not solely is that this placing a big quantity of customers out of an unsupported OS however, as analyst agency Canalys places it, could cause an environmental disaster. That is as a result of present laptops operating Home windows 10 that don’t match the {hardware} necessities for Windows 11, which implies that these laptops would probably not be recycled. That’s an estimated 240 million PCs turning into e-waste.
Customers could have the choice to pay for prolonged support, like with Home windows 7 earlier than it, however that solely prolonged the lifespan by three years and annually noticed rising prices for paying customers.
It stays to be seen how Microsoft will deal with this potential disaster, particularly since in recent times the company has appeared to grow to be extra proactive when it comes to sustainable and simply repaired {hardware}, in addition to different environmental points.
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