A way to run steam on old computers

[Ding]

I discovered windows XP was no longer supported recently when I pulled out an old computer. I learned that XP stopped being supported back in 2019. When steam first came out in ~2005, it was on XP. One of the objections people had to steam at the time was what would happen if Valve folded. Well, judging from the lack of support for XP, despite many games in steam working just fine in that OS without steam, we can no longer be sure we'd get access to our games. I suggest that Valve needs to find a low maintenance way to support people who want to keep gaming in their old OSs on their old computers. It's only a matter of time before it happens to windows 7 users too. At the very least we should be able to freeze steam and its installed apps permanently without fear of losing access if we connect to the internet.

[Start_Running]

Yeah and? Just upgrade.
Why should steam support and implicitly encourage users to use old, insecure OSes, with an old and insecure client? That'd be crazy.

[Brian9824]

Umm no. Microsoft is no longer supporting XP or providing security patches to it. Steam isn't going to put themselves at risk running on antiquated software. There comes a point where you have to update.

General support for XP ended back in 2014, and only the few companies with extended support had it thru 2019.

[my new friend]

Originally posted by Ding:

I discovered windows XP was no longer supported

This takes me back. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3307213006832142364/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2299597907724766176/

[nullable]

Ah yes your recent discovery of a three year old event that didn't affect you until you did something on a lark...

1. One thing you neglect is that XP users made up a fraction of a percent in 2019. Like 0.46% and they probably weren't generating 0.46% of Steam's revenue....
   
2. Steam selling software that still runs on XP doesn't put them on the hook to support XP forever.
   
3. When Steam was released in June 2003, lots of people still ran Windows 98. Windows 98 support ended in 2007.
   
4. There's nothing special about XP.
   
5. Microsoft ended support for XP many years ago.
   
6. The Steam client runs off Chromium, and Chromium support for XP ended. Valve supported XP longer than most.
   
7. Anyone's who use of Steam depends on being able to use the hardware and OS they were running in 2003, until the day they die, maybe isn't Valve's target demographic.

Most aged games will run on current systems, further the negating the need to support 20+ year old hardware/OS'es.

Three years after XP support has gone is too late to start proposing solutions. There weren't enough people in 2019 to make the argument. There's even fewer now.

Users who want to run old systems for kicks are free to do so, Steam is not a required part of that project, even if the user has old games on their Steam account.

[Lady of the Lake]

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

[Crashed]

#6 I believe is the biggest one. It would be unnecessarily expensive for Valve to maintain a compatible fork of CEF.

Come 2023, don't be surprised when Windows 7 (and possibly 8/1.1) support drops off due to Chromium setting its EOL date to then.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

Valve doesn't listen to conspiracy theories when they make their decision. Any Windows OS older than 8.1 is already a provable privacy nightmare due to unpatched exploits, some of which are extremely dangerous and can easily compromise your private data.

If one wanted to hide their terrorist plans from the government then using a supported OS would help since breaking into PCs with exploits is a constant cat and mouse struggle between the government and software vendors.

[Edifier]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Windows 7 64 Bit has 3.24% out of the users who have agreed to take part in the Hardware study. It's shrinking too.
Majority are on Win10 by a large margin too.

The privacy nightmare you speak off on Win10 is none existence.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Windows 7, like XP, isn't special. It's user share has dropped a lot over the last 3 years, and eventually it'll be used by the same fraction of a percent who think their love of ancient operating systems makes them the center of the universe.

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

Yes, that would be an option. And Win98/ME/2000/XP/Vista users make up a huge demographic that has catapulted GoG firmly into the largest and highest revenue gaming service on the planet /s.

[Haruspex]

I'm a retro PC enthusiast, and along with my main PC I have a Windows 98 setup with a Pentium 233 MMX and a Voodoo 1.

Back in the early days of Steam when most people were using Windows XP, most of the PC gaming market was still installing physical games from disc. It wasn't until a bit later that digital distribution, particularly Steam, became the dominant way to buy and play PC games.

I'm also a CRT TV and monitor enthusiast. The crown jewel of my collection is a big old beast of a Sony Trinitron that was manufactured in 2000 that I keep all my old consoles and a VCR hooked up to. I can still use that TV the way in which it was intended 22 years ago with one exception. The analog television broadcasts are no longer a thing. I'm okay with this. I understand it's 2022, and there's not much reason to support my old TV with analog broadcasts, and there are still plenty of ways for me to enjoy that TV.

It's 2022, and there's not much reason to support Windows XP with a working Steam client, but there are still plenty of ways to enjoy that old system. Install games the way most people did back then, from disc. GOG installers work fine on Windows XP as well, so that's a great source for period-accurate games appropriate for that machine.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

Yeah, for games that have Steam integration it's useful to have some sort of future-proofing of the Steam infrastructure that they use.

There are at least three different approaches to this:
* Ensure that the games run on modern computers. This is potentially the most difficult, as what's "modern" can keep changing, and even if it doesn't, this basically means making applications run in operating environments they weren't meant to run in.
* Make a version of the Steam client that works on older machines. Even if it's limited in features, this could at least do things like make Steam-DRM-protected things runnable without stripping DRM. And the applications can run on their older systems, and older systems continue to be useful.
* The last idea is to strip DRM -- or rather, to just release a tool to bypass Steam DRM. I doubt that Valve wants to take this step though.

That leaves the second option as the most viable one.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

Yeah but the bigger question is whether or not GoG will stay in business. Store has been posting losses in the millions.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam, the last OS that isn't a privacy nightmare which is something fundamentally important for any well-oriented people.

Good news is: GOG helps because games there are non-drm and you can download them just by logging onto your account on a website through browser.

Yeah but the bigger question is whether or not GoG will stay in business. Store has been posting losses in the millions.

They actually posted a profit the year before, so yeah.

But, most importantly, even if GOG goes out of business, any installers and installed games we've gotten from them will be usable indefinitely, and not dependent on a DRM authentication launcher.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam

It'll be a month of forum arguing when it's announced, another round when it finally happens. And that's it.

Just like when Steam stopped supporting XP, or W2000 back in its day.

Right now all W7 versions usage combined is less than 5% of the Steam userbase who participate in in the Hardware survey and that's number is only going to go down as days go by.
At the end of the day a very tiny minority of users are going to face any kind of problem the day Steam shuts down W7 support.

Originally posted by Quint the Alligator Snapper:

But, most importantly, even if GOG goes out of business, any installers and installed games we've gotten from them will be usable indefinitely, and not dependent on a DRM authentication launcher.

The frequency people posts suggestions to be able to resell or trade away their games should give anyone a hint about how much of a damn people gives these days about keeping their games long-term.

There's indeed an issue in how volatile software and content can become in the digital era (which is a subject for another discussion) but again we're rooted on the fact that's is an issue for a small percentage of users in any given platform. And businesses are gona business.

Not even GOG offers offline installers out of the goodwill of their hearts. it's all business.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by Newborn Spawn:

Yeah it won't be a funny situation when Windows 7 will be no longer supported by Steam

It'll be a month of forum arguing when it's announced, another round when it finally happens. And that's it.

Just like when Steam stopped supporting XP, or W2000 back in its day.

Right now all W7 versions usage combined is less than 5% of the Steam userbase who participate in in the Hardware survey and that's number is only going to go down as days go by.
At the end of the day a very tiny minority of users are going to face any kind of problem the day Steam shuts down W7 support.

Originally posted by Quint the Alligator Snapper:

But, most importantly, even if GOG goes out of business, any installers and installed games we've gotten from them will be usable indefinitely, and not dependent on a DRM authentication launcher.

The frequency people posts suggestions to be able to resell or trade away their games should give anyone a hint about how much of a damn people gives these days about keeping their games long-term.

There's indeed an issue in how volatile software and content can become in the digital era (which is a subject for another discussion) but again we're rooted on the fact that's is an issue for a small percentage of users in any given platform. And businesses are gona business.

Not even GOG offers offline installers out of the goodwill of their hearts. it's all business.

There are holdouts thanks to misinformation regarding newer versions.