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Hundreds of Thousands of Windows XP and Vista Users Won't Be Able To Use Steam Soon (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-road dept.

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."

12 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Boo hoo by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No-one should have have to support an OS that came out 17 years ago.

    1. Re:Boo hoo by Computershack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No they're not. They're updating the client, the old OS no longer has the features that the new client needs so from thereon in it won't work. You can still fire up the old client, it'll just sit there doing nothing. You don't have an automatic right to have a software company support massively outdated OS feature sets that was end of life a decade ago.

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    2. Re:Boo hoo by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But why would a game you purchased stop working just because someone no longer considers your OS profitable?

      The DRM is sabotaging a perfectly working piece of hardware that can't run newer OS but is fully fit for the game you paid for and which worked well until now. Thus, it's reasonable to demand removal of the DRM or issuing a refund.

      Also, running XP and Vista with unfettered Internet access is unhealthy, thus converting these games into offline-only would be ok. It's also reasonable to no longer support the Steam UI, but only if the games can work stand-alone.

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    3. Re:Boo hoo by Aaden42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Steam is a special case. If you can't run the latest Steam client, the licensing on your existing Steam games will stop working, and you won't be able to play them any more. They're making a change which because of DRM will make your old, not-updated games actively break.

      It's reasonable they want to update Steam to modern technologies. It would also be reasonable if they left a legacy license server up that will continue to serve licenses to the last version of Steam that ran on those older systems.

    4. Re:Boo hoo by F.Ultra · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to the latest Steam Survey, https://store.steampowered.com... , apparently 0.22% of the Steam user still does.

    5. Re:Boo hoo by DickBreath · · Score: 5, Funny

      The whole reason I was about to upgrade to Windows XP was for Steam. Now it seems like there is no point in upgrading.

      --

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    6. Re:Boo hoo by Zak3056 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On the other hand. Your car is too old. We're not going to allow you to buy gasoline here.
      Sorry.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

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      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  2. Is cutting them off necessary? by Sniper98G · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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?

    1. Re:Is cutting them off necessary? by Hentes · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because Steam is partly a DRM solution. Being able to run unpatched versions would allow for crackers to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities which could be used for piracy. Yes it's silly and ineffective like all DRM, but the big publishers, Steam's main customers, want to keep the illusion. Now I don't know what will happen to older games that don't run on Win7, but hopefully Steam will force the developers to upgrade them before the 2019 deadline.

    2. Re:Is cutting them off necessary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Boycott Steam, switch to GOG. If the game isn't on GOG, don't buy it. GOG is selling the entire Ultima series including spinoffs, for less than $7.

  3. Why steam has mandatory binding arbitration... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. It's not yours by Uteck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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