RIP Win7. You did what no other Windows could do. You had functioning components.
Windows 7 and 8 now dead for gaming, as new Steam update pulls support
Submitted 6 months ago by Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/windows-7-and-8-stops-working
Comments
MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Grangle1@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Kinda weird of me to be throwing this out there as a longtime Linux user, but TBF XP was quite good too, maybe even better for its time than 7.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
TBF an online Windows 7 copy is just asking to be Hacked given Microsoft support ended in 2020 and security updates after that required a paid subscription which ended in 2023.
xavier666@lemm.ee 6 months ago
The Chromium base, which is what Steam is built upon, itself isn’t supported on Win 7,8. Can Valve work upon it to make it backwards compatible? Maybe. Will it be a pain in the ass to maintain? Absolutely.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is one of the things, that’s not only a colossal amount of effort to maintain, but also a colossal waste of money. Backporting security is expensive. Backporting features to an old is is even more costly. With the W7 platform shrinking into obscurity, it just doesn’t make sense
Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
You could also use Win10 with ReviOS, AtlasOS, Ghost Spectre etc. as an addition to your Linux partition
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
The title of that article is kind of weird. It’s just wrong to claim they are dead for gaming because of a lack of steam.
Anyone can just get Witcher 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Stardew Valley, or Anno 2070 from GoG and for each of them you can game for another 50 hours without needing steam. Or get Minecraft from their page directly and play for 100 hours. This is all without going to any retro titles.
Voltage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
You need to tweak a lot to get latest minecraft java version running on Windows7
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Ah sorry I hadn’t heard that they switched to Java 21 with 1.20.5
Katana314@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you hate Windows 11 and don’t mind tinkering, I’d almost think Linux would be a better option especially if your preference is for retro games.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
I’ve tinkered plenty even when using Windows haha. I even have a Windows 98 and Windows XP virtual machine for some old things, but everything I care about seems to have a modern HD release, a userpatch or can be hooked with dxwnd, so I don’t use them anymore at the moment.
But yeah probably the long term solution is Linux. Personally I wouldn’t run Windows 7 anymore. The unfixed CVE list has become quite long. I just went checking out of principle, because I don’t like this conflation of PC gaming with only Steam.
I still haven’t made the jump to gaming on Linux, unfortunately. Although I’ve been running a dual boot for the last 8 years or so, because I used Linux for my studies, use it for my work, and for hosting my game servers on a second computer, so I would be in a prime position… but so far I have just gone the way of least resistance, which is Windows 10 at the moment.
But I have a deadline now: October 2025. Just need to figure out the best distro, I don’t think I’ll use my existing Fedora KDE install for this. Maybe Arch, or one of these new immutable distros, that might be neat for when different games require different versions of libraries.
hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
It’s surreal reading comments pining for win7/8. i am getting old.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
It’s surreal reading comments pining for win7
Oh no they’ve been in a coma since 2012!
I jest, but seriously I was in HS personally while whinging about 8 and wanting 7 back after my laptop auto updated on me like a jackass. Its actually the event that lead to me learning IT!
dandu3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Windows 8 is actually great. It’s the last efficient OS from Microsoft. I mean, you can actually be surfing on the internet and have 4 GBs of RAM and you’re actually having a good time? Well apparently you could before windows 10, or there’s something wrong with my laptop but it’s always chuggin along after boot at like 3.25 Gb used easy.
Maybe it’s because all the fancy x86 emulation it does is actually pretty RAM hungry too. Oh well.
(It’s a Samsung Galaxy book go. They’re dirt cheap! And I actually quite like it, it’s been my main computer for a few years now actually. )
Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 months ago
sirboozebum@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Windows 3.1 was the first one my family had.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Pulls support or bricks the program on those systems? There’s a difference.
toddestan@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Valve pulled support for Steam at the start of January 2024 for Windows 7/8. I thought that was the end, but apparently it actually just meant “Steam may still run but we don’t support it in any way”. Which surprised me when I booted up the old Windows 7 PC a few months ago and discovered that Steam still ran and seemed to work.
Apparently this update is actually incompatible and now Steam won’t run at all.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Oof
Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 months ago
It’s probably the inbuilt browser component that seems to be in everything these days.
Chrome pulled support for Win 7 and 8 ages ago, so anything that relies on an up to date browser is sure to follow.
Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Im still preparing myself mentaly to jump to linux the next year with the out of service of 10. Its hard because stop using adobe as graphic designer…
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I believe in you! Personally, when I find someone charging me subscription prices for something that should have a one-time fee, I flip the bird and run to the nearest competitor, but I can’t speak for your line of work. For my amateur needs, open source alternatives have gotten the job done, and I wish you the best.
Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
As a profesional i dont have an alternative. Anyway i use the 2023 ver. Pirated. I dont like all that IA integration.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
People will mention Gimp, but check out Krita as an alternative to Adobe
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Its hard because stop using adobe as graphic designe
Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and After Effects all worked when I tried them on Linux Mint 22 to see if they worked
Older versions from before the CC updates for those programs that you can use them for also work and work quite well, though I do understand that there are literally missing features for professional work in some of those older versions
A real Linux alternative (or proper fucking Support but fuck adobe) would be GREAT, but the change likely won’t be as bad as you might be worrying
So far the hardest thing I’ve had to install was called YAD, and that was so I could install Morrowind mods specifically, a rather niche need all things considered, and I’ve made multiple audiovisual projects on my Linux workstation without having to do anything like that
I do keep a Win10 LTSC on a side boot drive for games with anticheat and any programs I might need there but so far that’s literally only been handbrake, which I’m sure there’s a Linux version/alternative for but I just haven’t had to use it on that OS yet due to work flow
FrederikNJS@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If you want to migrate to Linux, I would strongly suggest you set up a dual boot, and start playing with it to gain experience. Being able to switch back to something you know is a massive benefit when you are still learning.
While Linux has come a very long way, you are sure to experience some hitches along the way. If not because of Linux itself, then because you are not familiar with how to do “that one thing” on Linux.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You can install Photoshop on Windows and copy it to Linux. It’s a very involved process but it’s doable. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzZQV5CBsGE
PanArab@lemm.ee 6 months ago
You might have luck running it using Wine or Crossover.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well the last good windows is dead.
Once windows 10 is dead I am full Linux, I have already begun the transition, any time I have to install a new Os it’s now fedora 40.
kalpol@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No reason not to go now.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Time, my last hold out is my main gaming rig, I have it set up exactly as I want it and I don’t want to rewrite the entire thing.
Vitaly@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Fedora 41 is the newest now
Fedizen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
couldn’t you just run games through linux?
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Mixed results.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
For games that could run on Win7 and 8? Not really
x00z@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s about Steam itself. Not about the games. Steam has a Linux build while the article is about the Windows build.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We lost Yuzu because of a Windows 7 user. Whoever that guy was, he deserved this.
SwordInStone@lemmy.world 6 months ago
how?
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 6 months ago
He got upset at the Yuzu developers for dropping support for Windows 7, and after throwing a tantrum in a GitHub Issue report, he directly emailed Nintendo and their legal team with a massive word salad directly linking to Yuzu. Multiple times. Then within around a month or two Nintendo initiated a lawsuit.
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Does the CLI still work? If so, you could download and play all the Windows 7 compatible, DRM-free games in your library just fine. Alternatively, if you already had these games installed, they’ll work fine without launching Steam first.
oce@jlai.lu 6 months ago
Does it also pull support for old Linux distributions?
tekato@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They don’t support new technologies (Wayland), why would they drop support for old ones?
Voyajer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Steam has only ever supported the latest Ubuntu LTS and Steam OS.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It still works the same on any distro with SystemD. Side note, I have seen people getting Steam to work on Void and Artix.
Auster@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Plenty of alternative stores that don’t require a launcher, so still possible to sideload games and therefore, 7 and 8 are not quite dead yet. (side note, but Vista is still also a decent system for gaming)
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I like to invoke the old magic of installing from a disc.
Auster@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Reminds me of disc-based DRMs. With how moody some were, I’d need to dump the ISOs, mount them with WinCDemu, and keep them mounted for as long as I kept playing those games. 😬
Mwa@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Just use Windows 10 or Linux
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Just use
Windows 10 orLinuxFtfy
Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
lol win 7 probably still can run more games than Linux
woelkchen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My Steam Deck runs most games just fine.
Mwa@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Linux can slightly run more tho,since windows 7 is eol.
ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Does it also affect SteamCMD?
woelkchen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Probably not. The main culprit is probably the bundled, Chromium-based web renderer (CEF), not Steam itself.
PunchingWood@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well W7 is practically 15 years old, and already stopped receiving updates itself. It’s not really up to Steam to keep it up and running if even Microsoft no longer bothers to update the OS, they also had to let it go at some point.
I don’t think anyone cares about W8 though, not even Microsoft itself barely seemed to put effort in making it work.
Sabin10@lemmy.world 6 months ago
To be fair, it’s not just a steam thing. My understanding of the situation is that chromium is dropping win7 support so anything using chromium will stop working on older operating system.
icedterminal@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Steam uses the Chromium embedded framework in case anyone doesn’t know. This renders the web pages in the Steam client. As mentioned, there’s no point in Valve maintaining the code base themselves when upstream Chromium drops support for 7.
This is similar to when browsers dropped support for Flash. Adobe stopped developing it and the major browser vendors removed their in-house flash plugins.
Nightweb@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I actually disagree here, as I have games that I purchased that only work in win98/winXP/7 I think they should make one “last” version that supports those old systems to facilitate the old games on these old versions. No new features or anything just what’s needed to provide access to these old games
eyeon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Isn’t the last version already that…well…last version?
If anything they could just leverage their work with proton that allows steam to play windows games on Linux to provide similar compatibility shims for old windows on modern windows
andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
There is a version of it on Internet Archive that I don’t know if it’s from Valve or not. It’s zipped installation of Steam. But I had no luck making it work, it’s webpage renderer still crashes at launch. As I’ve read into it, the old version should work for a while without updates.
archive.org/details/Steam_Windows_7
OfficerBribe@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Tried compatibility mode already?