Today (March 28), Steam officially announced that it will stop supporting Windows 7/8/8.1 system starting from January 1, 2024.

After this date, players will not be able to use the Steam client in these versions of Windows.

The reason is that the latest features in Steam rely on the embedded version of Google Chrome, that is, web cover. The latest Chrome 110 stable version no longer supports older versions of Windows, so Steam will also give up. Additionally, future versions of Steam will require Windows features and security updates that are only present in Windows 10 and later.

This change will have a small impact on the subsequent Steam software and hardware statistics. The total share of Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 is currently less than 2%, Windows 10's share reaches 64.68%, and the latest Windows 11 share is 33.27%.