“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
- Betteridge’s law of headlines
It’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that Valve are forcing you to update windows. You could instead use linux or macos, both of which valve support. They can’t just support a platform indefinitely, especially when said platform is essentially at “EoL” phase by the people who make it.
When you bought your games through Steam did you buy the right for Valve to support every OS forever?
If you install every game you bought through Steam before Steam stops support for your OS you should still be able to run those games through their own EXEs or launchers so yes, you do own the games. What you’re really losing is access to Steam’s store and the ability to install the game from them. Which sucks, but it’s not fair to suggest this impermanence in gaming is something new; physical media didn’t and doesn’t last forever either. Disks get scratched up and cartridges wear out; consoles die and production ends.
For anyone effected by this I would suggest they install every game they own and have a really good backup / restore plan. But even then, eventually no one will make compatible hardware and it will be impossible to find used. After that it’s all about whether virtualization and emulation are good enough for them to be playable. But in the end, sadly, nothing can last forever. So it goes.
Since when does Steam provide game installers “bare” that don’t need Steam whatsoever to do an installation? I thought they infected all games they sell with Steam, in essence being a DRM platform. I just checked on this issue, read some article somewhere, and they indicated this is true for the vast majority of titles sold on Steam.
GOG, on the other hand, provides both a GOG Galaxy and a standalone .exe installer for the games they sell. You can back up that standalone .exe installer and use it anywhere. If you want to sneakerware it over to an old machine, you can. Once GOG has handed you that .exe installer, they’re not involved anymore. They are not a DRM platform. In fact that’s one of their main selling points that they pitch: no DRM.
I’ve bought a few games from GOG. I have never bought anything from Steam.
Yarrr, matey.
It’s not really Steam’s choice, they are updating their embedded browser and Chromium dropped support for older versions of Windows, so automatically Steam is forced to drop support too. The alternative is to keep in exploits and bugs that have already been fixed.
It’s a lose-lose. Keep support up, someone using Steam could get hacked and have their life ruined with no one but Valve to blame. Get rid of support, suffer the wrath of 100s of people on these old OSs who can’t just move to Linux for some reason. I know which one I would choose.
As some people in the comments mentioned, it’s because Steam itself relies on Chromium on the backend. And Chrome is dropping support for Windows 7/8.
That being said, if you have a machine connected to the internet you really should be on Windows 10/11 or Linux at this point.
It’s pretty risky to be running an unpatched and unsupported version of Windows these days.
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@CifrareVerba It is Microsoft who needs to support Windows. If it was Linux, then you could blame Valve for not supporting Linux anymore. That happens, because Windows is closed source.
This is one of the many reasons as to why I’ve avoided buying anything on Steam for the past 5 years. Steam/Valve are a steaming pile of doodoo.
For this, really? Those Windows versions reached EOL a long time ago, basically no one should be even running them nowadays. If you want to run Steam then just use a supported operating system, like Windows 10 (and above) or Linux.
EOL Windows gets no patches or security updates. No one should be running them.
I switched to Linux when windows 11 was released. It’s donate or free and can run on old PC hardware.
Good for you. Me, on the other hand, I like living on the edge since no one should be running older OSes. B-)
I don’t want Windows 10 or 11, and certainly not Linux, of all things, to run on the retro PCs that I’ve put together to run their respective OS, and games from their respective eras. But what do I know?
Your argument is that you want to run the software that was intended to run on the hardware. That’s a fair argument, but that also applies to Steam, since it is software too.
And that’s totally fair. I’m not demanding or even expecting for Steam to support older operating systems. I just stated that this is one of the reasons I avoid VALVE and their products nowadays.
It’s my preference as a consumer, but voicing it seems to have riled up some dudes over here, like, for example, @ryanspeck who seems to be distressed and/or concerned by my consumer habits.
Fair enough, and that’s exactly what I would recommend for somebody who is in your position: avoid Steam.
I think the discontent from others comes from the vulnerabilities that come from using older Operation Systems online. If that’s the case, I agree with that point; things like Windows XP shouldn’t be used online anymore.
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Yeah…really. The thing is that, if you like to run older games on era-accurate hardware, Steam was already a pain in the ass to run on older machines. Probably 70% of these games, I purchased on Steam, and a lot of them are old titles.
Maybe this is ludicrous to you, but le good ole Prototype runs like a nasty turd on my main W11 machine that I use for design and 4K video editing. I’m not new to modding, troubleshooting, and I’ve even dabbled in game development, but none of the fixes online seem to help me run the game at more than 10 FPS, with dips to the 3FPS realm.
But guess what? Prototype runs like a dream on my restored Windows XP PC with a Core Quad and GTX260. Same as with Far Cry 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Jade Empire, and so many others. And don’t even get me started on games from the 90s. Even if they run OK on W11 and I get past all the text rendering issues, I still want the experience of running them on W98, with a CRT monitor, metal ball mice and bone white mechanical keyboards. I paid for them, but Valve wants to dictate how I should run 'em.
If you can’t install Steam on older hardware, you can’t install your Steam games that you previously could. 🥸
if you like to run older games on era-accurate hardware
This is the edgiest of edge cases.
As I’ve said, I’m a bad boy doing bad-boy activities, i.e.: using old PCs with the OS they came from. 🩸🗡️😎🔥
I for one dislike your comment because you used non-ASCII characters (emoji) in your reply. I am viewing this conversation chain via mutt on a tty, as is my preference and hobby, and would appreciate if you avoid using characters that cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII. If you’re going to the effort of having a discussion in a public place, you have an obligation to keep those of us on mutt in mind.
Sent via mutt 2.2.10 (gcc Version 2.7.2.3 (linux_3.3.1-1-i386))
This is hilarious, and OF COURSE they didn’t get it…
OHH!!! EMOJIS! The 200K Karma Redditor inside you is surely raging!
I commented on why I think this announcement is just another corn in the steamy pile of doo-doo… dookie… manure, if you will, that Steam is for me.
I’m not expecting Steam to change for me or people in the same scenario as mine. Steam simply doesn’t fit my needs any more and I won’t support them. But then again, crucify me for my sins, daddy. I might go back to purchasing games on Steam if you do it well enough. 🍆💦
Imagine thinking your this smart and missing such obvious parody of yourself.
Hint: their comment had very little to do with emoji.
I still want the experience of running them on W98, with a CRT monitor, metal ball mice and bone white mechanical keyboards.
CRTs, mice, and mechanical keyboards shouldn’t be an issue for newer OSes. You should be able to use them regardless of version of OS.
I can’t speak as to whatever issues exist with your install of Prototype. If you’re determined to use it on your older computer, you could try running it on the machine without Steam active – some titles sold via Steam do not actually use Steam for DRM, just for distribution/updates.
You could also try updating said older computer’s OS, on the off chance that whatever problem you have with said game on your newer machine is not specific to newer versions of Windows.
I might have worded that wrong. I WANT to run Windows 98 and Windows XP on these old PCs. It’s part of the experience, and the reason I even bothered to put them together. If you’ve ever watched LGR, it’s pretty much that kind of hobby.
Imagine you grew up in the 90s and at the languages school they had indigo and green G3 iMacs. Now that you’re older and drunk in nostalgia, you hunt for one until, after years, you find it. It’s green, beautiful, and it’s all yours.
Now you want to use it to play games of the era. You purchase them on Steam, as opposed to just pirate them. Steam works on this G3 of yours, (just an example since Steam never worked on G3 iMacs, but you get the idea.) and you’re able to play these old games as they were meant to be played, without issues.
Out of the blue, VALVE decides that Steam is just going to support the latest M-iMacs. The game and Steam are installed on your G3, but when you open the game, a pop-up appears reminding you that Steam isn’t compatible with this iMac. You try to run the game out of the executable file but get the same results. You’re effectively fucked, finding yourself crawling back to GOG, MyAbandonwaredotcom, your torrent site of choice, or your M2 iMac which have massive issues running these old games.
Niche case? Sure, but it still happens, and it’s exactly what is going to happen to the current generation of game consoles in the future.
There are exactly 0 companies that are going to make their lives harder for 0.0001% of their customer base. You’re the one with the niche hobby, you figure out how to make it work. Find the original discs or something. That’s not Steam’s problem.
Wrong.
There are companies that have built their customer base out of taking the extra step to cater the “0.0001%” of Steam’s: GOG, Humble Bundle, Kickstarter, and Itch.
1/3 of the Cyberpunk 2077’s pre-orders were made on GOG. I think “0.0001%” is a bit too pessimistic, don’t you think?
Absolutely agree. One of many reasons I’ve never bought anything on Steam, is Steam infects games with their Steam software. You don’t get the game “plain”. You get the game totally dependent on what Steam does with it. Like not running on an old machine anymore.
GOG gives me a backup of the game installer that has no GOG at all in it. I can save that backup to a DVD as an archive. Yes I do own the game, independent of GOG. I can get it to work, anywhere that it can be made to work. That might be easier or harder depending on where I try, but I can do it. I can do it 20 to 40 years from now if I remember to copy my DVDs, keep them alive, don’t get them burned in a house fire, don’t lose them, etc.
Microsoft just ended extended support for Windows 8 this week. My assumption is that there aren’t going to be many vendors that continue to support it.
Well, fuck steam then
Win 10 has been out for 8 years now. You can’t really be that shocked they want to make it a minimum requirement.
