Yesterday, Steam BROKE all my games FOREVER.

[lionell999]

Yesterday I started Steam and they pushed an update to me, no big deal this happens all the time, but this one was a purposeful POISON PILL that killed all of the games I had been collecting over the past 15 years. Steam did it on purpose, and took all of the things I purchased and broke them. Sound crazy? Sadly it isn't crazy. They did it, and they'll do it to you too!

So, how could this be? Well, let me say that the box they broke was running windows xp, and all the games they broke were specifically created for XP. Don't doubt me so much any more, do you? So, why do you care? You're happily running Win 10 or 7 or 8, why do you care that they just forced an update on my box that broke EVERYTHING? Because it won't take long before they come for you too. Remember, we now have less than 1 year before Win 7 is in the same state as XP is today -- unsupported. All of your games will one day break too without even a "sorry about that" from Steam.

You can't keep an XP box around to enjoy your old games anymore. Every last one of those games have been stolen from you FOREVER.

So, February 1st shall forever be known as the day all XP games DIED. No, I take that back -- February 1st is the day Steam DESTROYED every XP game.

Get ready all of you on Windows 7... next year (or maybe the year after) they're coming for you too!

[Valery]

I myself am using Windows 10 but I was an avid, long-time XP user. It is what i grew up with and I have quite nostalgic feelings about it. Played the first few Harry Potter games and Crazy Machines on that first PC I got 14 years ago, so I understand where you are coming from. XP is my favourite OS of all time and I wish I could go back to it.

[lionell999]

You can go back to it by buying an XP box from ebay... but Steam has now prevented you from playing your old games the way they were intended to be played. This is a huge loss. Even worse, the games that are incompatible with Win 7-10, or run very poorly, are now lost FOREVER. This is like someone breaking into your house and stealing all of your cherished Playstation 2 games. This is, in effect, exactly what happened. What a black day this is for anyone who cares about classic games!

[Count_Dandyman]

You still have all your games and they will all still work you just have to start delivering on your side of the agreement you made and use a system that is capable of doing what is needed.

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

This is indeed a terrible update then :( Anyhow..once you got a new OS you can use your old account again :/

[Start_Running]

OP Seriously. Steam warned you about this 7 months. 7. MONTHS. Seriously. Secondly , all those XP games will play just fine on a WIndows 7 box, most will actually run better.

[Winged One]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

OP Seriously. Steam warned you about this 7 months. 7. MONTHS. Seriously. Secondly , all those XP games will play just fine on a WIndows 7 box, most will actually run better.

Listen to start, he's a smart guy

[lionell999]

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

You still have all your games and they will all still work you just have to start delivering on your side of the agreement you made and use a system that is capable of doing what is needed.

No. Games that require XP won't work. Games that run poorly on 10 or 7 or 8 won't work as well. Not every game runs on the newer operating systems and this effectively stops you from using old systems to run old games.

[lionell999]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

OP Seriously. Steam warned you about this 7 months. 7. MONTHS. Seriously. Secondly , all those XP games will play just fine on a WIndows 7 box, most will actually run better.

Yep. So, they did warn me. So, what was I suppose to do with games that don't run well on 7-10? Patch them and hope for the best? I don't think you understand the problems associated with trying to get an old game to run well on a newer operating system. Some crash outright. Some run slowly. Some stutter. Some have graphical glitches. Warning me isn't going to fix the games. Just because they warn you that they're going to steal your stuff doesn't excuse them from doing it.

[Winged One]

Originally posted by lionell999:

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

You still have all your games and they will all still work you just have to start delivering on your side of the agreement you made and use a system that is capable of doing what is needed.

No. Games that require XP won't work. Games that run poorly on 10 or 7 or 8 won't work as well. Not every game runs on the newer operating systems and this effectively stops you from using old systems to run old games.

What games? People have made this claim countless times, only to be shown they work fine

Sometimes you just need to do a little extra configuring.. PC software is built with compatibility in mind, it's not a console here

[lionell999]

Originally posted by theseraph1:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

OP Seriously. Steam warned you about this 7 months. 7. MONTHS. Seriously. Secondly , all those XP games will play just fine on a WIndows 7 box, most will actually run better.

Listen to start, he's a smart guy

Nope ALL of them won't. Just getting a game to start isn't enough. You have to play it to the end, each and every one, to make sure there are no game breaking bugs that crept in. You have to search for patches. And some games, despite all your patching, will simply crash. You jam it in, patch it, and if it comes up it must be okay. No, that isn't good enough. If you are running it on an unintended opsys you have to become the debugging staff. You are not assured it will run well all the way to the end.

I can't tell you how many times I've been running a old piece of software and it suddenly does something crazy. Broken crazy. Ever try to run Word98 on Win 10? Oh baby. It runs. No error messages. Must be okay, right? Try saving a file. Does work, but it saves super slow and it garbages the screen. Guess it does still work. Sort of. Go out and buy a copy of Might and Magic IX from Amazon and try to run it on your Win 10 box. After you patch it 5 times (taking 5 or so hours of your time to collect all the patches from the internet) it will run... until nighttime in the game world and everything goes dark. Really dark. BLACK. So, I guess you could just keep sleeping until day time every game day. Over and over every day until you fall into the water and you can't see anything. It's working, but I wouldn't want to play it that way. There are literally thousands of examples of "working games" on Win 10 that don't really work right. Sounds missing, stuttering, control issues... if you like frustration and searching forever for patches go for it. I think a better solution is just run it on XP and it will work perfectly every single time. Well, until now because Steam BROKE it. Better get to patching! Don't worry though, I'm sure Steam will remove these problematic games from their store and pretend they never existed -- no matter how good they were... and still are.

Oh yes... maybe you can get them to work on Windows 7. Well, until Steam does the same thing to Windows 7. Less than a year from today and 7 looses ALL SUPPORT from Microsoft and is in the same category as XP is today... how long until you get the POISON update? A year and a half? Two? The XP guys are just the beginning of this, you Win 7 guys aren't safe, and neither are Win 7 games. If they'll do it to the XP guys, they'll do it to the Win 7 guys too, it's just a matter of time.

[Winged One]

Guess what, those can be fixed and you will find documentation on how to all over the net.. I have been gaming since the DOS days, I am old enough to be aware PC gaming is not plug and play and takes a few extra steps to get going sometimes

Funnily enough you mentioned one game and one I am very familiar with as I had been following 3DOs might and magic games since isles of terra (also on the topic of m&m, Archibald did nothing wrong) and it takes a few small Ini tweaks but 9 will run perfectly fine (well by 9s standards anyways, they were forced to release it before it was finished) right up until that drop off ending (god I hate the mirror puzzle)

[Brian9824]

Also as far as i'm aware you can always download the game on a windows 10 machine and then copy them to your windows xp machine and run the exe directly. Should boot up and play with no issue.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

You wouldnt have liked the days of setting DMA and IRQ channels to get games to run then. 20 years ago, every game would have been "unplayable" for you methinks.

This is drama. We have an OS that hasnt been supported for years, meaning it is hardly secure, and people complaining that companies arent supporting it any longer.

This is a surprise to you in any way? In actually more shocked that people think its a good idea to still be using XP on an internet connected box.

Here's a silly question, if this was a topic of such paramount importance to you:

WHY were you even allowing that box to be online and get updates if you knew all of this? You could have downloaded your large collection of "XP only" games, and you could have backed up all of the game files via steam. End of problem, you have an offline box, with XP, and all of your games for that box backed up, so you never need to put it online again.

But you didnt. Despite the fact that Steam said they were dropping support for this OS that Microsoft stopped supporting in April 2014, and despite the fact that you knew this, you just let the train keep going right on down the track.

Meh, whatever, spew more impotent rage. Its slightly amusing this morning.

[andrewplay599]

I have seen twitch streamers use virtual xp machines on there windows 10 pc. They seem to play there games just fine. If you want you could always go to gog they have made a bunch of really old games playable on newer systems.

[lionell999]

Originally posted by theseraph1:

Originally posted by lionell999:

No. Games that require XP won't work. Games that run poorly on 10 or 7 or 8 won't work as well. Not every game runs on the newer operating systems and this effectively stops you from using old systems to run old games.

What games? People have made this claim countless times, only to be shown they work fine

Sometimes you just need to do a little extra configuring.. PC software is built with compatibility in mind, it's not a console here

Okay... I have one... how about the ORIGINAL version of ICEWIND DALE? Not the remaster mess you find on GoG... the original one. Find a copy and try it. Of my 50 favorite games I tested on Win 10 not a single one worked out of the box. Yes, I did get all but two working eventually, but many of them don't work as well as they did on XP.

Getting old software to run on 10 (or 7) isn't a yes or no proposition -- it is a continuous sort of activity with games ranging from perfect to broken and many grey states in between. Someone who claims they "got it to work" may have it running, but does it actually work all the way to the end? Are there timing problems? Are there control problems? Are there graphic issues? Running the old games on XP is a much less problematic enterprise than the patching and testing mess you have to do on newer systems. Except, now we can't run them on XP.