Valve has officially announced that its gaming platform, Steam, will stop supporting Windows 7/8/8.1 systems starting from January 1, 2024. The client and games will not be able to run on these three versions of the OS, thus an upgrade to Windows 10 or above will be necessary.

Based on official data from Steam, the impact of Valve's announcement to end support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 is expected to be minimal, as less than 2% of players are using Windows 7 and less than 1% are using Windows 8. Moreover, with Microsoft having already discontinued updates for Windows 7, the vast majority of users are now using Windows 10 or 11. Therefore, if you happen to be one of the few remaining users of the outdated systems, it may now be a good time to upgrade.