Planning ahead for the demise of windows 10 and WMR VR headsets

[Ding]

When windows 10 goes out of support in october 2025, it will take support for WMR VR headsets with it. Some time after that, steam will drop windows 10 support. That may mean users with WMR headsets will not be able to play their VR games. This has already happened to windows XP users, and while steam probably still runs on win 7, at some point it won't.

These are the options that I can see:
1. Make sure you run your old OS offline so that steam never updates.
2. Hope that monado in linux offers better support when the time comes (it seems to be getting there) Maybe valve will chip in?
3. Obtain DRM free copies of your games to run on your EOL OS.

Considerations for indefinite offline use of steam can be found here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870046750

I've read that the main reason for Steam not being supported on older platforms is because of the embedded web browser.

How about making a version of the Steam that doesn't need an embedded web browser? Or maybe create a cut down version that is just for downloading and playing games without the store or community functions?

This issue is going to happen again and again because old hardware can conceivably work for many common purposes for decades. A computer from 2010 is still very usable today for internet browsing, HD video, email and Office. This is not how things used to be. A computer from 1990 was essentially unusable in 2004.

[Ben Lubar]

What makes you think Google Chrome is going to drop Windows 10 support in a year?

[76561199559798421]

honestly as a owner of WMR headset i haven't used it anyway in years, lack luster titles and zero game development turned VR into a sinkhole.

Valve index is already history with zero reboot options on the horizon, old tech fades away , maybe kids in 20 years will find your WMR headset worth revisting and new drivers will emerge to pick up where the industry failed.

keep in mind that my computer from 1988 is still very usable if you want to play lemonaid stand on a apple II c+ also if you like i can provide you with the floopy drive for it and a stack of floopy disks, it even does word processing and yes the printer still works. The point is why would you want to revisit that?

do yourself a favor and just keep moving with the times, living in the past not only makes you feel old but it makes you miss out on modern inventions.

for example steam revisiting the gameboy gamegear area is wasted on the 40+ aged steam dwellers that lived it in the 90's.

steam is just trying to make a buck off of DRM they do not own any of the content and will eventually not even be able to allow things they currently do.

if you really want to blame anyone blame microsoft and the federal government for allowing microsoft to age out its software to force customers to repurchase product.

[rawWwRrr]

It was 4 years after Microsoft officially dropped support for Windows 7 that support in Steam was officially announced as ended. Using that same timeline, Steam should maintain support for Windows 10 through 2029.

But, yes, it's an eventuality but not for a while.

[Crazy Tiger]

Win 10 will be usable for the upcoming years when it comes to Steam. Don't let fearmongers get to you.

The questions you pose are the same people posed when support for older versions got dropped. The answer to why the client will remain as it is can be found in those threads.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Ding:

When windows 10 goes out of support in october 2025, it will take support for WMR VR headsets with it. Some time after that, steam will drop windows 10 support. That may mean users with WMR headsets will not be able to play their VR games. This has already happened to windows XP users, and while steam probably still runs on win 7, at some point it won't.

These are the options that I can see:
1. Make sure you run your old OS offline so that steam never updates.

At somepoint your games will stop working if steam can't communicate with it's servers. Also what happens is that when an OS gets dropped they simply stop updating that version of the client. Your client will remain forever frozen at the last version for that OS...But remember your client is just a frontend. The Back end however will be changed. And just changing the naming scheme of the data requests to basically break the old client

Me thinks that at a given point Valve may very well find away to remove its reliates on WIndows security certificates entirely before W10 hits the cut off point. I mean there's a reason this ONLY happens with Windows.

Or conversely some legislation happens to make it harder for MS to pull that crap.