 It's 2024 now, which means Steam has officially dropped support for the Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 operating systems, which has some people feeling pretty sad, not so much about Windows 8 and 8.1 support drop because those two systems really marked the beginning of the end of Windows being good, but Windows 7. Man, let me tell you, Windows 7 will always have a special place in my heart as the second best Microsoft OS Windows ever right behind Windows XP because to me, Windows 7 was basically Windows XP again, but with a slightly cooler look. It was the Windows Vista that we wanted and the Windows Vista that we deserve because, well, Vista was pretty rough. Now, this update really should have you asking why is it breaking compatibility, especially if you know anything about video games because back when I had an N64 or a PlayStation 2, I was able to play those games for as long as I had the game and the console. I just put the cartridge or the disc inside of it, boot up the game, and it just works. Sometimes the online multiplayer functions of the game wouldn't work if the company behind them stopped running servers or whatever, but the campaign mode, the offline parts of the game, you would always have access to that for all time once you purchase the game. And this makes a lot of sense because if you think about it, the game is a finished product or at least hopefully it's a finished product. You know, at some point, it's no longer gonna get updates. Same thing with the console. PS2s aren't getting any new updates as far as I know. So the software of both the game and the console are at their final stages. Everything still works and so you should be able to continue playing that game until the end of your lifetime or the consoles. And you can even buy new games, you know, new games to you that you haven't played yet for that old console and they also are going to just work. There's so many games available for old consoles and old operating systems that still hold up today that you could easily keep yourself entertained for years without ever having to buy a current-gen console or a current-gen game at their marked-up prices. And if you give people the option to actually pay you to download soft copies of those games, then you can make huge profits off of those vintage gamers who might struggle to find physical media that's in good condition. Now, obviously computers are a little bit different than consoles and I'm sure that some people are gonna say, but Kenny, Windows 7 isn't secure. It doesn't get any updates from Microsoft anymore and you could get hacked if you were using it. But not if you treat your Windows 7 like a gaming PC, you know, like an old console that you play old games on without any internet connection. At that point, it's really no more vulnerable to getting hacked than an N64 and you should be able to still play all of those older games for as long as you want. But unfortunately, that isn't what you get with Steam. No, with Steam, you don't actually own any of the games that you've purchased. It says right here in the second paragraph of their post about Steam support ending on Windows 7. In order to ensure continued operation of Steam in any games or other products that are purchased through Steam, users should update to a more recent version of Windows. We expect the Steam client and games on those older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024. But we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that update. I mean, why not? You just don't have to do anything. Just leave everything as it is for the Windows 7 users. You know, fork off another version for Windows 10, 11, 12 or whatever other new versions they're gonna have and boom, everybody is happy. Now, the reason that Steam really gives for this change is kind of explained in the next paragraph here. It's because of the fact that the Steam client itself depends on the Chromium embedded framework, which is a simple framework for embedding Chromium-based browsers in other applications. So naturally, I would expect this to handle like the web browser aspect of things in Steam. I mean, maybe I'm sounding a little dumb and naive here. You know, maybe it also handles the UI on Steam. I think that's a big part that people use, you know, Electron or this embedded framework thing for. You know, it's difficult to be exactly sure what aspects of the Steam client really rely on this because the Steam client is proprietary software, but I still don't see why offline games that aren't receiving any updates themselves cannot continue to work on the current version of the Steam client that does not work on Windows 7 or why, you know, some part of it. Just the part that launches the games can't continue working on Windows 7. Like just keep an old version of Steam around that doesn't have the built-in browser. It doesn't have access to the online store. That way you don't have to worry about security or anything like that because nobody's financial information is going through it. Or hell, just take away all of the internet connectivity whatsoever. Don't even make it possible for people to play, you know, the online games, even if there are still servers out there where there could be a mix of people, you know, like Windows 7 clients playing with Windows 11, Windows 10, so on and so forth. Like just nuke all of the internet connectivity and let people download the games or buy new games from their Steam account in a newer PC that's so heckin' secure, you know, running the latest Windows and TPM 2.0 and blah, blah, blah. And then they can transfer that software over to their Windows 7 gaming rig on their LAN. The only reason that I can see why Steam is, you know, choosing not to continue supporting Windows 7 is because those users make up such a small percentage of the total user base of Steam that they don't even see that minimal level of effort that I just described as worth it to keep them as a customer. And I know that Windows 7 would be outdated for a daily driver, but you know, playing older games on it is great. There's a lot of games that run poorly or they just don't run at all on Windows 10. Windows 7 uses fewer system resources than Windows 10 right out of the box because it's not constantly spying on you and sending that data about your usage habits back to Microsoft. If you're using older hardware, then obviously Windows 7 is going to be the optimal gaming OS in the Windows family. And in fact, I would even go so far as to say that Windows 7 might be the best gaming OS ever. And I know that might sound shocking coming from a Linux evangelist, but the fact is most game developers focus their efforts on making games for Windows, especially back in the Windows 7 glory days. A lot of games that work quote unquote on Linux only really work with extra compatibility layers built on top that can affect the game's performance. And it's gonna be years, possibly even decades before the number of games that work natively on Linux actually overtake Windows 7 gaming native support, especially if you count games outside of Steam because believe it or not, Steam is just one teeny tiny part of the total PC gaming ecosystem. I really don't see any hard technical constraint that would prevent Steam from being able to provide basic gaming support for Windows 7. Just basically turn the Windows 7 Steam client into a launcher for offline games without any internet connectivity. It honestly just looks like they don't care about that 1% of Windows 7 users. But it's only a matter of time until this cycle repeats itself with Windows 10 users, okay? Keep this in mind for all of you people on Windows 10 now that are saying, oh, just upgrade, dude, Windows 7 is so old and outdated, okay? Windows 10 support is going to end or at least it's going to start ending next year in October 2025. There's gonna be probably some extended support for a few more years and then maybe a couple of years after that before Steam drops it. But that point is going to come. And so what is Steam going to do? Are they just going to tell the Windows 10 users to update to Windows 11 or Windows 12? Well, guess what? That update is not quite as straightforward as going from Windows 7 to Windows 10 because Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0 which didn't really start showing up in laptops until 2025, okay? This is a physical chip that you need to have in your PC and it's not just hardware that you can easily drop into it like a graphics card or some extra RAM. Even though a laptop and especially desktops from 2015 and earlier are more than capable of playing AAA title PC games, okay? My old desktop right here has an Intel 4790K in it and I have a 1080 Ti that's laying around somewhere that I could just slap in this bad boy and then it would get awesome performance in thousands of games even in, you know, again, AAA titles like GTA V and Fallout 4. There's no reason why people shouldn't be able to play the games that they purchased on the compatible hardware that they purchased it for so long as the hardware still works. And when all of this working hardware ends up in a landfill instead of in the hands of some kid that could continue using it for gaming, Steam is going to have nobody to blame but themselves for all of that extra pollution. If you enjoyed this video, please like it and share it to hack the algorithm and check out my online store based on when, linked in the description where you can buy awesome merch like this Come and Find a Ti and you can also save 10% at checkout automatically store-wide by paying in Monero XMR. Have a great rest of your day.