The entire back-end has changed.
Literally. People miss the fact that Steam is still a 32-bit app just to support older games. The rest of the world has moved onto 64-bit operating systems and applications. It’s shocking they still support 32-bit in 2025.
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
The steam client has nothing to do with the games it launches.
Process.Start() works on 32 bit or 64 bit processes…
They are on 32 bit because they don’t need to upgrade to 64 bit and it’s likely too complex to upgrade.
Visual Studio, which actually benefits from 64 bit, just recently upgraded because these massive software stacks are difficult to update.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
They keep a bunch of 32-bit libraries for backwards compatibility with older games that they launch. You can find numerous discussions about this in the Steam forums as well as on sites like Hackernews.
Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
You just proved my point.
Runtime environment != the steam client.
Starting a 32 bit process (ie, process.start()) means nothing to the 32 bit steam client.
They can upgrade the steam client to 64 bit without affecting the launched games. that’s the point I was making.
They just haven’t.