Steam have announced that at the end of this year the Windows Steam library client will cease to work on Windows 7 and 8. This means you won't be able to access Steam and your library on these versions of Windows, and any games you have installed won't run.

The reason for this is Google are ending their Chrome browser support on these OSs and Steam uses Chrome to run so it will have the knock on effect of also no longer working.

This isn't great news because many long time gamers will have Steam libraries that date back many years. Mine for example dates back 19 years to 2004 when Steam first went public and was required by the Half Life 2 Orange Box to install and run the game.

Many older games have OS system compatibility that won't run well or at all in Windows 10 and 11.

The exception to this is the Steam Deck as it runs Linux Steam OS and it's own Steam client setup, and many older games run perfectly. So running Steam OS might end up being required if you are still using an older version of Windows and want to play your older games from your Steam library.

This isn't great as Valve should be supporting their long time customer base and maintaining library access and compatibility.
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