Steam will stop working on windows xp and windows vista next year

Valve has announced that its popular video game platform Steam will cease support for Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems on January 1 of next year 2019.

Steam ceases support for Windows XP and Windows Vista

Valve has reported that the rationale is because future planned changes to Steam will require modern security updates and Windows features that are not available on such operating systems. In this way it joins Google Chrome and other applications that abandon support for older operating systems.

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This means that after that date the client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. To continue running the client and any games or other products purchased through the platform, users will need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. The latest features are based on a built-in version of Google Chrome, which no longer works in earlier versions of Windows. Additionally, future versions will require Windows security and feature updates only present in Windows 7 and higher.

Throughout the remainder of 2018, Steam will continue to run on Windows XP and Windows Vista, but some features will be limited by compatibility issues. One of these features is the new Steam Chat that will not be available. Valve encourages all users of these operating systems to upgrade to newer versions to have continuous access to the latest features.

In the latest Steam hardware and software survey released in May 2018, only 0.22% of users were running the 32-bit edition of Windows XP with no input whatsoever for Windows XP 64-bit, 32-bit Vista and 64-bit Vista.