Steam has finally upgraded to 64-bit
Steam is finally upgrading to 64-bit
With the release of Steam’s newest client beta, Valve has officially made Steam a 64-bit application. This comes little more than a month ahead of Valve’s planned depreciation of Steam’s 32-bit version, which will be retired on January 1st 2026.
This beta update is expected to roll out to all Steam users in the near future, retiring the last of Steam’s 32-bit elements. This move follows last year’s removal of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 support from Steam. This update modernises Steam, and prepares the platform for future changes.
Steam Client Beta – November 25th
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:
General
The Steam client is now 64-bit on Windows 11 and Windows 10 64-bit.
Systems running 32-bit versions of Windows will continue receiving updates to the 32-bit Steam client until January 1, 2026.
This upgrade is a non-issue for gamers
Today, Windows 10 32-bit only accounts for 0.01% of Steam’s userbase, and Windows 11 has no 32-bit version. This means that almost all PC gamers have a 64-bit-compatible PC, making the shift to 64-bit a non-issue for nearly everyone.
Why is Steam moving to full 64-bit and dropping 32-bit OS support?
Future versions of Steam will only support 64-bit OS’ moving forward. Why? The simple answer is that planned platform upgrades and core features of Steam rely on drivers and other libraries that only support 64-bit OS’. Future versions of Steam will only support 64-bit OS’. That means that users of 32-bit OS’ should upgrade their systems. Valve recommends that users do this “sooner rather than later”.
You can join the discussion on Steam’s 64-bit upgrade on the OC3D Forums.
