Valve is ending Steam support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

[scavengerspc]

What have you heard of, Tinder and TikTok?

Tinder and TikTok? Wait, aren't those from the last 100 years?
Unlike Windows 7 and 8.

I think I know one guy still using 7. A very nice 82-year-old neighbor. He also can't let go of an inferior past.

 

[axiomatic13]

I have two PC's on my desk. One for gaming and the other I run my home lab with. The home lab unit runs Linux and let me tell you, the very second Linux achieves parity with Windows on gaming I will dump Windows like a bad habit on my gaming PC. Don't @ me with Wine etc. It's inferior to Windows at this point still for gaming. I have it loaded. From time to time I benchmark it and performance wise they are still incomparable.

 

[loki1944]

That screws me up big time as I use Windows 7 and some of my DirectX 9.0 Steam games, that I'm currently playing or planning on playing, only work fine on Windows 7 (from what I've read and seen). But fine, I could understand the end of support for Windows 7, but why for Windows 8.1? That OS only came out like yesterday. WTF is this?

I'd check GoG to see if any of those games are there and wait for a sale to grab them cheap so you can have them DRM free. I've already replaced any steam game that is on GoG with either the GoG version or physical disk version for just this eventuality.

 

[Mousermind]

I tried Windows 10, and after a losing battle trying to control my own OS, I switched back to Windows 7 Ultimate and never looked back. But if Steam is pulling this crap, I guess it's finally time to bite the bullet... and get used to Linux, because F(orget) that S(pyware).

The malware excuse is though, because that comes down to safe browsing and usage, not how well your OS babies you.

 

[Mousermind]

I'd check GoG to see if any of those games are there and wait for a sale to grab them cheap so you can have them DRM free. I've already replaced any steam game that is on GoG with either the GoG version or physical disk version for just this eventuality.

Big raisin brain.

 

[hwertz]

I tried Windows 10, and after a losing battle trying to control my own OS, I switched back to Windows 7 Ultimate and never looked back. But if Steam is pulling this crap, I guess it's finally time to bite the bullet... and get used to Linux, because F(orget) that S(pyware).

The malware excuse is though, because that comes down to safe browsing and usage, not how well your OS babies you.

I don't think you'll regret it. Honestly, you set the "Enable Steam Play for All Other Titles" (since otherwise, it won't even list games that have not been validated by Valve, even though they usually work), and that's about it. The few games I have not had work as-is, they worked if I picked a different Proton version (5.13 for a few), Steam has a tab in the game properties where you can pick Proton version off a list so that's easy. No performance issues, no compatibility issues, not even any graphical glitches or the like. I've even run Cyberpunk 2077 on an integrated Intel GPU... obviously it runs better on my home desktop's GTX 1650 but I was shocked it ran at all to be honest.

Valve's put a lot of development into Proton (which usually make their way into Wine), dxvk, vkd3d, and Mesa, and it's done a lot of good. 5 years ago there was no expectation a game would necessarily work with Wine (It had about 95% API coverage but loads of stuff needed the other 5%); and if Wine worked... other than Nvidia binary drivers which have "always" been quite good, it was totally hit or miss if the driver support was good enough to run the game. Now, it's more a surprise if a game DOESN'T work even with an Intel GPU let alone anything better.