Taking away OS support, Takes away our games. Dont do it!

[SnakeWildlife]

This move is abhorrent and out of touch with Steams users, let alone the LEGAL implications.

If you take away support for these operating systems, you take away games which are only compatible with those operating systems, from my library. Im a retro gamer so i play a LOT of old games which are incompatible with Windows 10 and above.

@Gabe Newell, please come to your senses on this one, this is the WRONG WAY to enhance the Steam Client.

Are you going to refund all the games in my library which are for older operating systems, or is your plan simply to pluck away my ability to play the games iv paid for? This cannot be legal. It is Sabotage.

Please stop the *Compatability Catastrophe* that is going to happen in 2024. I never wanted to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, i was forced by DirectX discontinuation (even though 7 should have no problems supporting modern directx and games) and that has meant a lot of my library doesnt work.

By continuing to sell games that will not work , in most western nations this counts as a Sale of Defective Goods, which is illegal. When my working games are made non-functional by you, Microsoft or Google, this is a Sabotage of Goods and a breach of the Consumer Rights Act and Sale of Goods Act.

Im not a legal expert... and I hate to bring it up because i have always been on the side of Valve...but if this creates some kind of class action lawsuit, you either owe everybody the games you have disabled people from playing, which they have purchased, or you stop this AWFUL plan to discontinue OS support. I honestly believe you should not, and cannot be allowed to get away with such an anticonsumer move. There are so many things which Proton will never be able to fix.

This is the worst possible thing i could ever see Valve/Gabe going ahead with...so please, you have to undo this terrible decision whilst you still can. It's not right.

You are pushing people into believing physical copies of games are the only way to keep their games...but because of Securom we cant even do that. When you make it inconvenient for us to keep the games we have purchased, you may be forcing people into the piracy route, or as they may see it "Rightful reclamation of a purchased game".

If this goes ahead, i and many others won't have any choice, we will be shoved forcefully off of Steam in order to preserve compatability by any means necassary, and go download the games we purchased, i personally will go back to Physical storage, because that will be the only thing i can trust. The Disk/Disc/Cartridge/Drive In MY physical possession and in MY hand seems to be the only thing i can trust. *Physical copy, that i own and you cant steal away.*


VALVE, GABE, Please dont do this. Turn around.

Many of us have laid our full trust, and we have laid our massive game libraries, in you ....and this is how you're going to behave?
Do you believe that old games have no purpose to exist at all and you should disable our ownership of them by Compatability Disabling?
*That is not for you to decide!*
These games are NOT breaking because they are faulty. YOU are purposefully taking actions which lead to my games no longer working.
*YOU ARE DAMAGING MY GOODS*, which again, is ILLEGAL.

Please Gabe, i hope you're reading this....we need you to act, to change this around and find a solution! We need you to respond! Please dont do this!

I guess if you're going ahead with this, i should just refund this steam deck. If i cant trust you, i dont want it in my hands.

Now that i have my plea out there....lets talk about the Future.
Just drop Google and Microsoft dependancy with your software, GO FULL OPEN SOURCE with your Browser. Here's an idea:

Contact or even Hire the staff at Firefox instead, this is Steams opportunity to become peoples main internet explorer, and NOT have to disable compatabilities.

Degoogle yourself. Demicrosoft yourself. Keep compatability maximized. Rip out what isnt Valve's, and hire people who can replace what you lost. Everybodies happy, and you gain a massive market share of adrev that can be generated from becoming a prime Browser competitor in the field.

You have a Window here to fix everybodies worries....and GAIN massively from it. Dont shutdown OS support and do the possibly WORST thing you could ever do in 2024.

[Satoru]

You not wanting to upgrade to windows 10 is the problem. Steam is not 'taking your games away'. You are doing it to yourself. That is a you problem, not a steam problem. Sell your steamdeck im sure someone else will hav eway more fun with it

Oh btw feel free to go to any other service! You might wonder if any of them support windows 7. Oh wait they dont!

[Cathulhu]

They removed support for Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista in the past. Why were you thinking it would be any different than Windows 7 and 8?

Good luck with any notion of a class action lawsuit as you have nothing to stand on.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by SnakeWildlife:

I never...NEVER thought Valve would do something this abhorrent and out of touch with its users, let alone the LEGAL implications.

You obviously missed the same thing back in 2018 when support for XP/Vista got dropped. And way before that when 2000/ME got dropped.

Originally posted by SnakeWildlife:

I hate to bring it up...but i think this may swiftly create a Class Action lawsuit.

Good luck with that.

Originally posted by SnakeWildlife:

We have laid our trust, and our massive game libraries, in you ....and this is how you're going to thank us for our loyalty?

Loyalty is a two-way street. Where is the loyalty to understand the business, and technological, decisions made?

Originally posted by SnakeWildlife:

I guess if you're going ahead with this, i should just refund or sell this steam deck. If i cant trust you, i dont want it in my hands.

Best to do that then. This dropping of support is going to happen, no matter how many people will push back.

[Bee🐝]

No one is taking anything from you. You’re free to upgrade to 10 for free, switch to Linux/Proton or hope the community finds a workaround.

Did you never plan for this eventual day? You must’ve known a day was coming pretty soon when Win7 wouldn’t be supported anymore. What was your Plan B in this situation?

[ShelLuser]

Take it up with Microsoft, they're the ones who stopped support for Windows 7. Did that THREE years ago (EOL was in 2020).

As for Steam... if they don't drop support it'll be waiting for the first real break in to happen. Because eventually this won't be safe to use anymore.

[punchobastardo]

It's not Valve who is taking away OS support, but Micro$oft who wants to sell you the same OS bloated with more bloat with every release with a "fresh" UI as a makeup to hide the unholy technical mess underneath.

At least it's encouraging seeing people like you "waking up" from their sleep and ignorance all these years.

Switch to Linux.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by SnakeWildlife:

I never...NEVER thought Valve would do something this abhorrent and out of touch with its users, let alone the LEGAL implications.

Yeah, when XP support dropped the literally same way a couple years ago, there was no way something similar would happen again, like,ever.

Theres no way this would ever happen again either. 10/11 support won't drop when there's Windows 128. We're living through a totally unique part of history that didn't happen since the big bang and won't until the last black hole evaporates.

[Buckaragua]

Has onyone read and understand the initial post?
The problem are the games not running on windows 10, but on Windows 7. I think steam is required then to deliver versions that run on windows 10 or refund the purchase price.
Will they do it? I don't think so.
And when you chase them to court? You may win or may win not, but for sure steam will close your account.
That's the problem with platforms like steam. They have godlike power, and in the end the customer is the victim.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by nullable:

Any beliefs you had you'd be running Windows 7 into the 2030's or 2040's and beyond is pure fiction and not the basis for any serious argument.

By the time January 2024 rolls around I figure something like 0.5% of Steam users will be running Windows 7. By February all the fuss will be dead.

And then we can look forward to seeing people freak out over Windows 10 support ending around 2030.

Right now, it's only 0.09% of all Steam users who still use Windows 7.

[punchobastardo]

Originally posted by nullable:

And then we can look forward to seeing people freak out over Windows 10 support ending around 2030.

"October 14, 2025".
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro

So, in two and a half years you all will be pretty much slaves to Micro$oft with MS Windows 11, which has TPM2.0 and will be soon™️ only running on CPUs with the integrated blackbox chip called Pluton, that will only be getting undisclosured firmware updates via Microsoft Update, having full access to your system by accessing the memory, in order to make your machine "more secure", not for you ofc, but against M$, their... "friends" and servers, basically heading further down the path of closing down the PC platform and making it a terminal accessing their mainframe "securely". Theoretically this means they can shutdown your PC remotely. Because fundamentally flawed "Frankenstein" OS can not ever be fixed (otherwise it will just fall apart) and will always be vulnerable to trojans, malwares, rootkits and viruses.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Buckaragua:

Has onyone read and understand the initial post?
The problem are the games not running on windows 10, but on Windows 7. I think steam is required then to deliver versions that run on windows 10 or refund the purchase price.
Will they do it? I don't think so.
And when you chase them to court? You may win or may win not, but for sure steam will close your account.
That's the problem with platforms like steam. They have godlike power, and in the end the customer is the victim.

I read that. But I take such remarks with a grain of salt. When support for XP/Vista got dropped, people made similar claims. Most didn't back up their claims by providing examples, the ones that did got shown to work on Win 10 (some of them I owned myself). Perhaps with a tweak or two to get great performance, but they worked.

I play a lot of old games (back to the 80s) and it's rare that I actually run into games that don't run on Win 10. It's mostly games from the SafeDisk/SecuRom era, but those aren't digital versions anyway and can be played with some workarounds (so to say).

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Buckaragua:

The problem are the games not running on windows 10, but on Windows 7.

Name one. The one I've seen mentioned constantly is Fallout 3 and I've played that on 10 myself. No hacks, no fan patches.

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by Buckaragua:

Has onyone read and understand the initial post?
The problem are the games not running on windows 10, but on Windows 7. I think steam is required then to deliver versions that run on windows 10 or refund the purchase price.
Will they do it? I don't think so.
And when you chase them to court? You may win or may win not, but for sure steam will close your account.
That's the problem with platforms like steam. They have godlike power, and in the end the customer is the victim.

Sorry, but no. You can get nearly every single game that's existed to run on Windows 10 and 11 with minimal work, if any is needed at all.

And if the game doesn't run on Windows 10, that's on the games developer, not Valve. Steam is just a store front and DRM.

People refusing to update their Operating System and Hardware over time, is on them for losing access to things like this. There's been zero evidence shown otherwise.

[Bee🐝]

Originally posted by punchobastardo:

It's not Valve who is taking away OS support, but Micro$oft who wants to sell you the same OS bloated with more bloat with every release with a "fresh" UI as a makeup to hide the unholy technical mess underneath.

At least it's encouraging seeing people like you "waking up" from their sleep and ignorance all these years.

Switch to Linux.

Uhm...it's 2023...they no longer care if you buy the OS, they'll happily upgrade you for free. You do realise that Microsoft no longer makes the bulk of the money off home users and Windows, right? This is such a silly argument - it died somewhere in the 90s but people keep repeating it.

Heck, even though they supposedly hate everything not Windows, Microsoft worked with Valve to get GP streaming running properly on the Deck. Those steps are how we now run all web-based pages in game mode.

[andreasaspenberg575]

i have several games that does not run in windows 10: castle of illusion, street fighter x tekken, shop heroes. then there is rise of legends which only works in single player in windows 10. finding all of them takes too long.