Months after warning, Steam finally dumped support for it’s desktop clients on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 on the last day of 2023.
The company has been warning with a countdown timer on top of it’s desktop clients and says it won’t pass any updates after the deadline. Asking users to upgrade to a supported version, Steam says it can’t guarantee the functioning of it’s desktop clients in the future running on the unsupported versions.
Ditching Steam App on Older Windows
The one-stop shop for thousands of video games on desktops, Steam officially ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 on December 31st, 2023 and asked users to upgrade to supported versions for smooth gaming.
The company has warned the community for months that after the expiry date, “existing Steam Client installations on these(unsupported) operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind, including security updates“.
The company says it’ll not offer any technical support for issues related to the old operating systems and can’t guarantee continued functionality of existing Steam clients on unsupported OS.
Microsoft has long stopped supporting Windows 7 and ended support for Windows 8.1 last year. As it’s also scheduled to cut off Windows 10 in October 2025, upgrading to Windows 11 is a better option if you don’t want to update regularly.
Steam also warned that using older versions of Steam could be vulnerable to new security flaws and may lead to information-stealing hacks. This could be your passwords, letting hackers takeover your account and earnings within.
More than players, Steam developers’ accounts tend to attract more cyberattacks due to their ability to push game updates. Hackers accessing a game developers’ account can conduct supply chain attacks that may have devastating affects on the community.
Well, Steam has already asked developers to use SMS-based authentication to protect their accounts while pushing new updates. While it’s partially helpful, hackers may still breach in via the SIM swapping technique, so it’s advisable to have a multi-factor authentication turned on with hardware security keys or a third-party authenticator app.
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