Starting from January 1, 2024, Steam will cease to provide support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, which implies that the Steam client will no longer function on these operating systems. This announcement has been made by Valve.
Valve provided an explanation in a statement “In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows. This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.”
The Steam hardware and software survey for February 2023 reveals that a minuscule percentage of users utilize these outdated operating systems. Windows 7 constitutes just 1.52% of the total user base, while Windows 8 users are a mere 0.34%, resulting in a combined user percentage of only 1.86%.