Steam has finally stopped working on several older Windows operating systems, following a warning from Valve that it planned to drop support earlier this year. With little fanfare, Windows 7 and Windows 8 gaming on Steam is no longer possible following the most recent Steam client update on November 5.

↫ Ben Stockton at PCGamesN

It's honestly wild that Valve supported Windows 7 and 8 for this long for Steam in the first place. They've been out of support for a long time, and at this point in time, less than 0.3% of Steam users were using Windows 7 or 8. Investing any resources in continuing to support them would be financially irresponsible, while also aiding a tiny bit in allowing people to use such unsupported, insecure systems to this day.

I'm sure at least one of you is still rocking Windows 7 or 8 as your daily driver operating system, so I'm sorry if you don't want to hear this, but it's really, really time to move on. Buying a Windows 10 or 11 license on eBay or whatever costs a few euros at most - if you're not eligible for one the free upgrade programs Microsoft ran - and especially Windows 10 should run just fine on pretty much anything Windows 7 or 8 runs on.

Do note that with Windows 10, though, you'll be back in the same boat next year.