Valve has dropped support for Windows XP and Vista on Steam
Valve has dropped support for Windows XP and Vista on Steam
The PC gaming market is driven by continual hardware and software innovation, whether it is the creation of more powerful CPUs and GPUs with increasing core counts and complexity to the creation of new software that revolutionises the way games and other applications are developed.Â
Like all applications, Steam has to evolve, and with that evolution eventually comes the discontinuation of support for older hardware and software solutions. In this case, today marks the end of official Windows XP and Vista support for Valve’s Steam game launcher, with comes thanks to the addition of features that requires Windows 7 or newer operating systems.Â
With Valve’s “New Steam Chat” comes the integration of an embedded version of Chromium, an add-on that lacks support for Vista or older Windows OS’. This has forced Valve to end support for both operating systems. Thankfully, Windows XP only accounts for 0.11% of Steam’s userbase (according to Valve’s latest Steam Hardware Survey), making the loss of Windows XP users rather inconsequential. Windows Vista doesn’t even make it onto Valve’s list of top 10 Windows OS’, making its market share less than 0.06% of Windows users on the Steam platform. Â
Another factor that is worth noting is that Windows XP and Vista no longer receive security updates from Microsoft, making them insecure when compared to modern OS’. There is also the fact that modern gaming hardware also lacks support for these legacy operating systems, making it only a matter of time before all gamers users abandoned the OS.Â
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Abandoning legacy operating systems will allow Valve to modernise Steam in a number of ways, hopefully allowing the storefront to become more user-friendly and offer new features in the future.
Steam remains the world’s leading PC gaming storefront, though this position will is not guaranteed to last forever unless Valve makes an effort to improve their ecosystem.
You can join the discussion on Valve’s ending Windows XP/Vista support on Steam on the OC3D Forums.