It's far past time you updated from these unsupported operating systems.

This week, Valve announced that if you are running Steam on either Windows 7 or Windows 8, you are going to need to upgrade. Come January 1, 2024, Valve says that the Steam client will no longer run on those versions of Windows.

If you are one of the fewer than 2% of all Steam users still using either of these operating systems, it's beyond time you got around to moving on to something newer. Microsoft stopped supporting both Windows 7 and Windows 8 in January 2023. Technically, consumer support for Windows 7 ended back in 2020, with an additional three years of support only offered to businesses that paid for extended security updates. Both Nvidia and AMD also stopped supporting their GPUs on these operating systems.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 are old operating systems. Without receiving new updates, these operating systems are extremely dangerous to use if you are connecting to the Internet. You should have already upgraded to newer operating system versions a long time back.

Valve says that the big reason behind dropping support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 lies in its use of the built-in Chromium-based browser. Steam uses this browser to render the Steam storefront and other parts of the user interface. Chrome already stopped supporting Windows 7 and Windows 8 when Microsoft fully dropped support for those operating systems in early 2023. The versions of the Chromium-based browser that can still work on Windows 7 and 8 are far more susceptible to security bugs and will also start to show rendering bugs and a decrease in functionality as time goes on.

Valve says, "future versions of Steam will require Windows features and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above."

Those still on Windows 7 or 8 can still make use of Microsoft's free upgrade to Windows 10. Chances are good that if your PC can run Windows 7 or 8 fine, then Windows 10 shouldn't be an issue. From there, users can even freely jump to Windows 11 if their hardware meets the requirements necessitated by Microsoft's newest operating system.

Valve suggests that those still using Windows 7 or 8 should consider upgrading sooner rather than waiting for the January 2024 cutoff date. I think you would find that most technically inclined people will make the same suggestion to upgrade as soon as you can rather than waiting as those operating systems are now very vulnerable to malware, new viruses, and other security risks.