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Hundreds of Thousands of Windows XP and Vista Users Won't Be Able To Use Steam Soon (vice.com)
Windows XP and Vista users have six months to upgrade their operating systems or get the hell off of Steam. From a report: "Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems," Valve, the company that operates Steam, said in a post to its XP and Vista support community. "This means that after that date the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. 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."
No-one should have have to support an OS that came out 17 years ago.
It's the worlds smallest violin playing a sad song.
"Not supporting" and "suddenly revoking compatibility" are two very different things. Steam no longer being supported on XP and Vista just puts it in the same category as classic open-source and freeware: use at your own risk.
Maybe it will work, maybe not, but it's no one else's responsibility if it doesn't.
"This means that after that date the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows."
I can understand the desire to not have to support the older operating systems. But, why completely stop in from running?
Why not just say, "if it breaks too bad" and let people risk it if they want to?
Laughable because 10 is so much more secure than a 20 year old operating system, right?
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cortana-hack-lets-you-change-passwords-on-locked-pcs/
Yeah, about that....
This is the reason you should only buy BOXED games !!
Short Steam stock now!
After "that" date? What date?
Pirated games don't care what OS you use. If it runs it runs.
And nobody can alter the deal after the fact.
Steam forced mandatory binding arbitration on their users because they wanted to be able to offer lifetime access to games, with the ability to revoke your access any time they feel like it's too much work to keep giving you access.
If you accepted it, good luck.
IOS does something similar where you can download the last working version of the app for your IOS
why can't steam keep the old legacy servers for the old client and repoint everyone to new servers that will be updated along with client? disable purchasing on the legacy servers and just keep them for the old games
Microsoft's CEO is currently driving a big push towards an absolutely terrifying "YOU OWN NOTHING" model of cloud computing. Everything - games, media, apps, office and productivity software is supposed to run in the Cloud only, and nothing will install or run locally anymore. Valve's role in all this was to create a completely unnecessary Cloud DRM service - Steam - that nobody asked for or needed, and essentially RAM IT DOWN YOUNG PEOPLE'S THROATS. Young gamers - maybe 500 to 700 million of them now - were supposed to get used to a forced SAAS model of using software while they are young, where there is always a Steam/UPlay/Origin client or similar and no games run at all if you don't have that digital umbilical chord reaching into a cloud DRM service. The reason they did this to gamers is to get them used to the idea that ALL COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE needs to be tied into a Steam like cloud service. Basically, Microsoft is SHITTING all over computing as we from the 1980s/1990s knew it, and Valve either works with them to make it happen, or is actually secretly a Microsoft Company of sorts. What these guys want is a cloud computing model where the paying consumer has ZERO CONTROL over anything anymore - the cloud service allows you to do something, or it doesn't. They are all in on it judging by all the recent cloud news - MS, Nvidia, Valve, Ubisoft and many others. Given how used the Young Ones are now to Steam, Origin and so forth, that cloud strategy will actually happen successfully, until someone with really good lawyers goes to court and shoots the whole thing down. The whole thing can only be described as diabolical if you love computing as it has always been.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Spam bots, the lot of them.
But I couldn't possibly afford the ~$100 to upgrade my Windows OS! A bloo bloo bloo
Yeah ok ivan
The founders of Valve are ex-Microsoft and "self-funded" using their own Microsoft bucks, so yeah, in a way they are!
Windows XP still has 5% market share over four years after end of support. It will be interesting to see how it keeps going after the end of Firefox and Steam support. Also when POSReady no longer gets updated. Most of it is in China and on businesses with expensive legacy hardware and software.
This effects retro gamers the most.
Surely anyone actually stuck on the affected OSs would just switch steam into offline mode?
Leave behind an unsupported legacy client that doesn't update, but still phones home for your precious "licensing" every time I execute. Problem solved.
EOP
So much for "buying" games on Steam if I can't access them due to an every changing policy at Valve.. The cloud fails us again.
If Vista is obsolete then it won't be long before Windows 7 is taken off the support list. And the handful of us that don't like the amount of telemetry that Microsoft places in recent OS versions will have to stick to playing crappy free games like Tux Racer.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Hey Ivan, reminder from uncle vlad that we're supposed to use "Boris" when shitposting. Best regards, Yuri.
As long as older games still work under current versions of Windows, I don't see a huge amount of anger over this change. But if Microsoft ever decides to clean up their API by removing depreciated functions or by dropping older compatibility sandboxes, I could see some real push-back since older games would eventually become unplayable unless Steam continues supporting older OS versions. As the AC above notes, this is what pushes people to pirate from abandonware sites.
if I owned one I'd be demanding a refund right about now.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Already patched
That is plain stupid and egocentric way to think!
A machine may not have anything useful but it can be used a botnet, jump host, malware server, etc
That is why IoT is a big problem, people think like you (eg: it is just a webcan looking to a plant, i do not care), yet it was involved in a DoS that knockout your favorite site, it is acting as a reverse proxy for some child porn, it is CC node in a huge botnet or even just mining some crypto coins.
The fact that it works do not mean that it should not be replaced. At very least should be protected and if it is not possible to protect it (like XP, if it connects to the internet), it should be terminated and replaced.
Higuita
Valve.
Now the question is whether he's a microsoft shill, or whether being a microsoft shill was beneath his ambitions and Steam is in fact him doing Microsoft's abuse one better.
Could thing I don't care or have one of those machines.
Seriously dude, take your meds. Half what you rambled and shouted here is flat out wrong, and the other half applies to pretty much any modern game, no matter how you get it.
I buy almost exclusively independently developed games through Steam that are DRM free. And while yes, Steam takes it's cut, I wouldn't have found many of those games without Steam, and it makes buying them so easy I'm more likely to impulse buy. And most of them run without Steam running.
The games that require DRM to run do have some serious SAAS issues, but that's not all games, and Steam doesn't handle the DRM a large portion of the time anyway. If you buy any AAA game, odds are that it negotiates the DRM with the publisher on launch, and Steam doesn't have anything to do with it. Steam functions more like an app launcher with a storefront, social network, and analytics than it does a DRM enforcer.
And there's minimal cloud strategy with Steam. If you want to store your save games with Steam, you can. But you can just store them locally and back them up as well.
Have you even used Steam?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I guess they'll just have to hack an ATM. Not to steal money, just to play games on XP..
Organization? You must be joking..
Dude... Do you REMEMBER what PC gaming was like before Steam?
"if you love computing as it has always been"
Clearly not. Let's think back, shall we?
You had to have the CD in your computer to play. People started putting in multiple CD-ROM drives so that folks could easily play different games. That's not so bad...
The DRM on those CDs was so invasive, some included rootkits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal), back-doors, viruses, or would otherwise slow down / take over your PC (Oops! You can't use your CD-R anymore, too bad!).
Sometimes the DRM or other software on the CD would corrupt your OS, so you had to format it and reinstall everything.
Lost your CD? Game gone, can't play it ever on anything, have to re-purchase.
Bought the game on PC, and changed to a Mac? Have to re-purchase.
No sales, everything at full retail all the time.
You could never get your money back for a shitty game.
Dongles! Some software used to require physical dongles to run as part of their DRM.
Are you a small developer? Do you want to sell in more than just your immediate locality? Good luck manufacturing/distributing/selling world-wide.
Steam was (and continues to be) successful, because it turned the adversarial relationship between player and publisher into a much more cooperative one. It's not some grand conspiracy. It took a terrible user experience and turned it into something that was organized, didn't install rootkits, let people have all their games at their fingertips, works across platforms, and has ensured that if I have anything resembling a modern computer, I can play almost anything I've ever purchased. Oh, and there's not monthly fee for anything.
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
RMS has been warning of this for years, you don't own anything if it is on someone else's server.
Steam is just game rental.
no
There is an old game I loved called Ancient Art of War at Sea. Played it on an old 286 with a CGA graphics card. I found it once on an abandoned-ware site. Thought awesome, I can play it again. Yeah, about that, it loaded and ran, but as soon as I clicked start it was over and I lost. The game used the CPU cycle timer and not the actual clock timer for turns. Computers are a bit faster now. So I can't play that game anymore (yes I know there is slowing software). Computers improve and change quite fast compared to other industries. I KNOW that what I buy now may not work in a year, or may not work well, on new systems. If I buy something with an online DRM system I also know that if that system stops, so does my software. It's why I avoid buying that type of software if possible (it's becoming harder though with things moving to software as a service). While I think it would be great if Steam could have a way of releasing those games to continue playing without upgrading the OS, or even provide some time of emulator sand box, anyone who wasn't aware that there lifespan was limited when they bought them, especially with the verification systems being used, was living in a fantasy world. If you wanted to keep that old computer and run that game forever you better have made sure when you bought it that it could stand alone. Just my two cents.
And this is why I just play retro Atari 2600 games on a cheap handheld with an AV out cable.
I have a XP virtual machine that all I use it for is running Sim city 4 on steam. It is the only windows software I use at home.
Sure I could run Sim City 4 on a different OS but that would require redoing all of the patchs, mods, etc... Apple is planing on killing all 32bit software soon so no OSX... Also the time to re-find theses old patches for this old game then install them, debug them, etc ..... Probably not going to happen, life has gotten too busy... Upgrading my windows VM is not going to happen either, even though I have a legit XP license that I paid full price for but Microsoft's authentication system disagrees, and upgrading an OS inside of a VM sounds like a lot of trouble.
Alternatively City Skylines is fun I guess. But I just can't get into it in the same way.... There is something about SC4 that has never been topped, and some of the community mods are fantastic like the one that fixes the traffic simulation, and the gap pieces for building transit networks.
Sigh... Oh well, I guess my crippling addiction to this time wasting game had to end at some time... Should I thank Valve?
Nice strawman, "social media liaison". Apparently not supporting big brother now makes you a commie.
Remember when Americans cared about decentralization of authority?
Offline mode still works. If not that, users should ask themselves if they are ethically and morally OK with pirating copies of games they legitimately own.
But it's been 17 years. MS does not support those versions of Windows any more. The writing has been on the wall for years. It's time to upgrade.
if a game worked on my system one day, and stopped working on the next. that's the definition of taking it away.
Maybe you're OK with that compromise. Steam is a convenient service and if it suits you, then great for you.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Apparently the bit about intentional incompatibility is straight from Valve and not added in by one of the chain of re-tellers. Well, that's a rude move. There will probably be a hack around the changes within a month of each patch, but that's still unpleasant, like the forced patches Steam puts out and then waiting for mods to hack around the new changes.
Windows XP? TOO OLD TO GAME ON!
Original NES? Yeah, sure, that'll continue to work forever.
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Steam IS DRM you fucking idiot.
You need steam to launch the fucking games. Without it MOST games will not run.
Lost your steam account or get banned for political reasons. Game gone. Your Os no longer supported, game gone.
You people are fucking retards. You are giving the keys to your gaming kingdoms to steam and declaring "ohhhhh it's so convenient".
I can not wait, and I repeat, I can not wait until steam fucks you over. It isn't a matter of will they, it's when will they, because it's 100% coming your way.
So enjoy your DRM convenience. The rest of us use GOG and play games that don't REQUIRE a shitty third party DRM plug-in.
there are titles i've gotten off steam that only run on the older windows versions.... is valve gonna refund my money when their client forces me to upgrade windows and that kills my older games?
captcha: fuming
...and it is powered by electric mains, no need to use steam to spin the hard disk, thank you!
So does this mean they will not be selling any games made for XP and Vista?? Im not sure how Steam can prevent people from playing the games they bought and paid for. So we cant use Steam then cut the cord so we can play without Steam.
Jack of all trades,master of none
You do not buy the games, you rent them (for a one-time fee) till they decide otherwise.
Actually the terms valve imposed allow you to have the arbitration handled in small claims court instead of the usual AAA den of corporate shills.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/valve-to-steam-users-no-class-action-suits/
Valve's goal was to eliminate class actions. You can still take them to court as an individual.
Steam runs on Mint. ....just sayin'.... I have Mint running on two xp-era laptops with solid state PATA drives and they're surprisingly snappy. Get an extended lease on life for aging laptops. Unless you just *have* to have one of those new 128 GB Lenovo monstrosities.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And since I only buy games that are on sale I could have my steam account revoked right now and feel like I still got a great deal.
That's right. Google owns every one of us. Facebook owns every one of us. They're just letting us rent our identities back.
Most sites that have not already will be disabling anything older than TLS1.2 for https shortly so a lot of stuff is going to break on that vintage stuff soon.
Greed is the root of all evil.
So if piracy is better, why isn't everybody pirating Windows as a solution? Seems a lot easier than trying to pirate thousands of games.
if all Valve employees had to take any console & games older than gen 7 and throw them into the trash?
With 1/3 of the Steam catalogue on Linux, installing it on the old machine running XP is 1/3 of a solution. Note for later: remember to never again buy a game with a DRM.
Dude... Do you REMEMBER what PC gaming was like before Steam?
You had to have the CD in your computer to play. People started putting in multiple CD-ROM drives so that folks could easily play different games. That's not so bad...
Steam was (and continues to be) successful, because it turned the adversarial relationship between player and publisher into a much more cooperative one. It's not some grand conspiracy. It took a terrible user experience and turned it into something that was organized, didn't install rootkits, let people have all their games at their fingertips, works across platforms, and has ensured that if I have anything resembling a modern computer, I can play almost anything I've ever purchased. Oh, and there's not monthly fee for anything.
Justifying unacceptable behavior by invoking even more unacceptable behavior is priceless.
GOG.
Steam has an offline mode.
It is not perfect, but should allow continuing playing of these games:
https://support.steampowered.c...
Another option is gog connect, which will liberate (a small subset of) your games from drm
https://www.gog.com/connect
Are you an idiot or a liar? What part of computing from the 80s/ 90s did you fail to understand? Please show us a single root kit from that era. Your other complaints are ridiculous. Does your mother still dress you? Who do you cry to when your lose login passwords?
Nothing he said was wrong. You're wrong. Your attitude and willingness to give up your rights is the whole reason that paying full price for renting games is successful.
I don't rent software, because I want to use it how I want to use it, when I want to use, and where I want to use it. I've been running some software for 30+ years, and I'll be damned if some punk company is going to decide when and where I may continue to use something THAT I OWN. Nope, haven't used Steam, and don't care to.
The whole business model operates on the assumption that each and every customer is a thief at heart, until proven innocent. In fact, there's no need to prove anything: It's enforced. No thanks.
Steam was (and continues to be) successful, because it turned the adversarial relationship between player and publisher into a much more cooperative one.
Yeah, real cooperative. Like when I bought Duke Nukem Forever. It wouldn't do ANYTHING on my hardware, and I could not get a refund or sell it to someone who could use it because ... Steam.
Yes, Steam has made things SO much better.
You could never get your money back for a shitty game.
I couldn't get my money back for a game that refused to run at all, so tell me exactly how Steam is an improvement when it was the fact Steam was involved that kept me from recovering one cent.
I've gotten two or three refunds from Steam. That feature launched in 2015 (Duke Nukem Forever came out well before that, I think). You can ask for a refund if you've owned a game for less than two weeks, and played fewer than two hours. I don't know of any other retailer that lets you return games.
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Did you take your meds???
Seriously TardChris!!!!
Pay off your credit card!!!
Every dollar you spend on bobbleheads instead of investing in one of the few remaining market growth cycles represents at least 10 less Kraft Dinners (R) after your retirement!!!
oh?
https://sockettools.com/kb/sup...
there is need, so it exists
Before steam:
Buy 10 games, have 5 people in the house, play any of the library when you want.
With Steam:
Buy 10 games, spread across 5 accounts.
If someone is using a particular account, you cannot play any other games tied to that account online.
Seriously, now imagine you've built up a library of 300 games.
Do you really want to buy them 4 additional times just because another account with a license is used for a *different* game?
Now that you've taken the license away and I have NOT violated the license, give me back the money I paid. These games are licensed, not sold, so if YOU break the license, YOU lose the exchange YOU agreed to. So give me back the money paid for the license.
YOU agreed to that. It's in the terms (termination of license).
With their commitment to not censor game developers.
They need to at least make sure people can keep playing their games.
This is extremely rude and a break of the contract you expect.
Probably not the only they gave you.
Thing is, if Steam ban me I take them to court for the replacement cost of the games.
My worse case scenario is that I have to buy the ones I still want to play again. At current prices I could replace all 750 games for a few thousand quid, so a few hundred will get me any that I fancy playing. It's not so much in the greater scheme of things.
The one thing I sure as fuck couldn't do is replace them on GOG, as GOG just don't fucking sell many of them.
Show you? Shit, I don't have the source code any more.
Yes, we were writing root kits in the early 90s. Hell, the university encouraged it.
You may like to explore the Steam 'family sharing' feature.
You can upgrade for free to SteamOS!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Do I remember?
Yes. I also remember things like Daemon Tools, CloneCD, BlindWrite and Alcohol 120% which were able to copy and imitate the copy protection quite effectively, not to mention the availability of NoCD cracks if you didn't want to bother with that either. I really did enjoy reading about how all the different types of copy protection functioned, and how it was possible to get around them.
I've dumped raw CD and DVD images of all my games dating back to 1994 (Terminal Velocity is still damn fun to play) and they work just as well now as they did back then. They'll continue working as long as I have the the data, functioning hardware and a suitable OS (take your pick of Win98, Win2k, or an enterprise version of WinXP which didn't have this activation bullcrap). I don't have to ask someone else's permission to use the stuff which I bought.
When games used invasive (eg. Starforce) or offensive (Steam, anything else with online activation bullshit) DRM, I just refused to touch them.
Oh, and that Sony rootkit thing was for audio CD-style products (which actually violate the Compact Disc specification - they're not allowed to call themselves CDs) and as such is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. It also did precisely nothing if you disabled autorun on your system - one of the most important security tweaks which you could make in the Win98 era.
Your OS has been EOL for over a decade. Stop spreading viruses, you assholes.
Why do you still run XP? Is your computer a potato that literally won't handle Windows 7? If so, hand in your gamer card.
Just fucking run Steam on Linux, you stubborn morons. I can guarantee that the majority of your games that you've been running in Windows XP are compatible with Wine by this point.
Just email the two people using Steam on XP and the one weirdo using Vista. It's probably easier and you don't have to worry that they'll miss the announcement.
All the XP users are going to be absolutely livid! All 0.22% of them!
https://i.imgur.com/wCudJlU.pn...
Reduce,Reuse, Recycle
Reduce: Fix any problem or replace only the broken parts... this case, switch OS
Reuse: Reinstall a different OS and give another use for the computer, resell the used computer or give it to ones that may reuse it. You can also reuse components
recycle: instead of trowing away, send it to recycle... even by just melting the CPU and board, you can get gold, platinum, and other value materials... if the recyclers are competent, they can make a good profit from used computers
Higuita
You won't be completely shut out of games that they've already downloaded. Just disconnect your internet or run the (old) version of the Steam client in offline mode. Any games that were already downloaded will continue to work (I do this all the time while traveling or when internet is unavailable).
What this WILL break is the ability to download other games that you already own (and it'll likely break outright if you ever update the Steam client, forcing you to hunt down an older version). So while it's far from ideal, it won't instantly lock you out of games you own.
if Steam ban me I take them to court for the replacement cost of the games
Looks like someone didn't read their agreement - particularly the part about binding arbitration.
A Windows license key doesn't allow unlimited installs. I think the limit is five, after which you need to phone Microsoft Support (get your credit card ready) to manually activate. Unlike Apple (with its De-register This Computer functionality), Microsoft doesn't have a way to deactivate a Windows license so you can move it to a new system.
Besides, the License Validation servers for Windows XP were probably switched off long ago.
Valve don't have to, and nobody is forcing Valve to discontinue service. They're choosing to discontinue service despite that users did what Valve once asked them to do when acquiring the software in the first place. So you've bought right into the improper framing of the issue built around letting a proprietor dictate what a computer owner should be allowed to continue to run (very much in line with corporate media, TFA, and most of the software freedom-denying coverage on sites like /.).
The people running systems Valve don't want to "support" shouldn't be denied use of the applications they obtained legally and in a manner the proprietor once deemed acceptable. That Valve has the power to identify and reject such users indicates that the client conveys a considerable amount of information to the server which the server uses to put an entirely artificial end-date on software. Clearly what people need are free software applications connecting to free software servers.
Everyone deserves to retain full control of their computers, and once again we see the only way to do that is to run a fully-free software OS with only free software on top of that.
Digital Citizen
Serves you right for supporting and using Steam. You were warned.
Sure the games still work fine but because the games are tied to the Steam client, and Valve have declared you can't use the Stem client any more, you can't play it any more.
Shit like this is why piracy will never die.
That people will be forced to pirate things they technically own is just more delicious irony.
Piracy is the only way to preserve our gaming history.
As it is, we have lost vast swathes of really good games on platforms like XBox and PlayStation because they were on-line only and are no long available due to e.g. licencing or support.
I do wonder if they are still going to sell games that only work on Windows XP now that they're stopping supporting XP tho'. Is it legal to sell software that won't work properly? I guess not...
And let this be a warning to the rest of you - Figure out your escape plan from Windows and Steam now; Soon it will be the turn for Windows 7 and 8 users to get swept under the rug.
Either you bend over and let Windows 10 have its way with you or you find an alternative.
Support GoG and indie DRM-free studios if you value your games and want to be able to play them or show them to your kids years from now.
You've been blinded by the convenience - It's just as bad as it was then, maybe even worse.
Steam *IS* the CD you have to put in the drive - What is happening here is proof of this; The CD is being broken, but just for XP and Vista users, so they can't play the game they bought and paid for any more through no fault of their own.
Steam controls how you can access things you own just as much as securerom et. al did; They're just up front about it and you welcome it with open arms.
They are now the gatekeepers for 90% of all games on PC - That is an incredible amount of power fools like you have given them. This is why you will never see Half-Life 3 - Why should they work on that when they can sit back and soak up the money doing virtually nothing.
It makes me sick how so many of you are so unsympathetic to affected users about this; I hope you remember how much of a dick you behaved like when it is your turn.
And it will be your turn next.
Turn away from Steam and support GoG and indie-devs who don't use DRM!!
The only way to reverse this trend is to boycott and vote with your wallet, but there are so many of you who are not doing this - You were warned when Windows XP came out about how on-line activation would spiral and now we have Steam and Windows 10 and it will only get worse if you keep on this train!!!