So this is the date when ASF V2 without websocket support will stop working. Good to know, thanks!
BTW, new steam chat will be unavailable explicitly because of that, the chat uses websockets everywhere.
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No change in chat command usage on v3+ though right?
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Oh, that sucks... Anyway, ASF is still a damn great app! Thanks for all the work you put into it!
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Does Steam Idle Master still work for You guys? Because for me it doesn't. Shows there are no games to idle, when there's hundreds.
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Been using ASF for years now, so I have no idea in which state IM is.
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it stopped working for a few months, but now it works again, maybe they revoked a api they used?
At least it requires less setup than asf
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If you can somehow upgrade to Windows 7 you should be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for it.
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Who'd want to upgrade to Windows 10 rather than stick with Windows 7 though =P
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Exactly what happen to me when I got new PC parts. I wanted to stay with win 7 but the CPU said no :D
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afaik all AMD/Intel hardware still supports windows 7, it just doesn't support USB through that OS (but there are multiple workarounds). M2 SSDs also need some additional drivers if you're going that route instead of SATA.
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Try ryzen cpus, too much hassle to make them work on windows 7 just to prove a point.
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I may end up trying eventually, since I'm kind of interested in the second generation of Threadripper CPUs. Actually the first generation TR chips do have official support for Win7: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/830385-official-amd-ryzen-threadripper-windows-7-chipset-drivers-available-so-newer-amd-cpus-are-officially-supported-with-windows-7/
Yea I know, not really the same thing as standard Ryzen CPUs, but close enough :p
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If you have hardware that requires it, games that require it or want to run games with DX12.
Personally, I think WIn 7 is more refined, but Win 10 has become a very solid competitor to Win 7.
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Ah, I forgot about high-tier hardware that requires Win10. That sucks.
As for games, are there even any Win10 exclusive games nowadays? I know there were few before but if I remember right they all eventually added Windows 7 support.
Can't say I care about DX12 that much when there's Vulkan and it works on Windows 7.
I'm not very happy knowing that I'll probably have to switch to Windows 10 the next time I get a new PC due to hardware. But I guess it's not going to be that bad once I heavily configure and mod it (disabling updates via registry and applying skins/apps that change the horrible start menu interface and perhaps some other things).
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It's not for high-tier hardware though. I have mid-tier hardware and I use all of these things. There a few Win 10 exclusives, like the newer cross-platform Microsoft published games, I think. Most have gotten Win 7 support though, like Quantum Break and so on yeah.
Vulkan is as uncommon as DX12 (Overall DX12 is more used, but barely). The issue is that Vulkan will work for Win 10 as well. Having 2 options is better than 1 in my opinion. DX12 also improves performance for a fair few games (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Battlefield 1, Hitman). DX12 isn't for high-end hardware at all. Even my old GT 640 is DX12 supported and that GPU is a low-end mess that can't run most of anything that's newer than 2012.
Win 10 isn't amazing. Win 7 is still better in my opinion. But it's not as bad as some people say it is. Most hate seems to just be from those that hated it from the beginning and are now unaware of the updates. Basically the same way it was with Win 7.
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Unfortunately, Skylake (i3/5/7-6***) is the last generation of intel chipsets to support Windows 7. :(
MS also backed down from saying that they would stop supporting Skylake in 2017. (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11675/windows-7-windows-8-1-skylake-systems-supported) :D
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It's been 3 years and they're already abandoning Win 7. I get that the market's abnormal now, but still (free Win 10, meaning more users, the consumer base is more receptive to more frequent software upgrades and so on). Windows XP still had support a decade after launch. Most games stopped supporting Win XP in 2009-2010.
At least they backed down a bit. But still, the overall direction they're heading in isn't great.
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True. It is sad. Given trends and their at-one-time stated goal, I can see Windows eventually becoming a subscription service, while I would sooner switch to Linux than use a subscription-based windows!
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Lucky for you, Windows 7 keys are dirt cheap now. You'll be able to get a key for less than 10€ these days either from gray markets or from Ebay. :)
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same thing for Win10.. you get keys on ebay and amazon for 5-15€ ..
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I wonder what they will say about the games that never really ran past XP, there were a few like that
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The developers will need to update their games for newer operating systems or it probably won't be on the Steam store anymore.
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Doubt it. There are games being sold that literally don't work, and they don't give a damn.
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They will wrap them in a VM running Linux running WINE emulating XP. ;-)
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Pretty sure they'll cite compatibility mode. Which was a hit or miss feature in windows.
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Wouldn't it be possible to keep a XP compatible Steam client and not upgrade it?
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I was thinking the same thing, but if they ever update the API between the client and the server, and don't code in backwards compatibility, the client will suddenly fail. (Though the failure may be limited to a certain feature, like chat or the store.) I'd give it a couple months at the most before something like that happens.
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Would Win 7 Pro's XP Mode run steam and/or those XP-dependant games?
My understanding is most games that required XP really required a 32 bit machine, which is what XP mode provides.
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Nah, like they weren't running past XP. Stubbs the Zombie (a game I wish I still owned on XBox) was removed because it just refused to run past XP. There is a fix for the disc now, though I understand that it didn't work for the Steam release, so I don't know if anyone can still get that working.
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Question is, will XP users still be able to use their latest functioning client to play their games and potentially get the updates or will they have to walk the plank?
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GOG's client doesn't support XP either.
GOG Galaxy Client requires Windows 7 or newer.
Same with Valve's Steam client. The only difference is you can get them from GOG without needing the client at all, unlike Steam.
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you can get them from GOG without needing the client at all
...and there you have it, you can forget about Galaxy AND play the games from GOG.
XP users will be forced to either upgrade or play from GOG, unless Valve makes diet-coke Steam for XP users
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C'mon, who uses Windows XP these days? And more importantly Vista.
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A quarter of China. They are also the reason some global internet services still have to run on Internet Explorer 6.
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You're very much correct. Win XP is a huge platform still.
But for Steam? It's less used than Linux... Those that use XP and use Steam barely overlap. 0.22% from the Steam survey. Windows Vista being so unpopular that it doesn't even have a percentage value listed (meaning that it's less than 0.05%)
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We still run a PC with Vista on it. That being said, we don't use it for steam because it is so old, it cannot handle modern games. On the other hand, it is 32 bit....
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That might be the reason (or one of them, at least) Steam is branching "Steam China" away from the main distribution in cooperation with Perfect World.
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According to latest Steam stats total majority of it's users has Win10 in 2018...though I've lost that link to new stats
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Steam -> Help -> System information -> Compare your hardware to that of other Steam users: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
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99,86% users with microphones sounds a bit not true.
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Yea whatever method they're using to check that is definitely broken.
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I'm pretty sure that's the number of users with microphone capability.
So if you have either an integrated microphone or a plug for one, you get added to the number.
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Yeah, that would explain it, I guess. If that's the case, the information is simply useless, not incorrect (otherwise the statistics is pretty curious).
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they are recording you from your phone mic and it's sending data to steam
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XP users will no doubt be able to still run Steam without any problems. The end of support doesn't state that you need to upgrade but any future issues you encounter will not be amended, but i also assume that updates will be programmed not to install, so there is time to think about which path/OS you will move to.
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but i also assume that updates will be programmed not to install
This is Valve we're talking about, a company which is typically indifferent to the considerations of its user base unless forced to a response, and typically minimizes the effort they put into things. It's risky to rely on assumptions which require the company to be considerate of such things.
Keep in mind also that even up till now Steam client has required you to be up to date on updates, or functionality when using the online mode starts having issues. If you intend to exclusively continue via offline mode then yes, you shouldn't see any issues. Otherwise, it'd only be a matter of time (note the quote's implication that the client will stop functioning past 2018)- unless, of course, Valve does add support for legacy client syncing.
At this point, it may be best as an XP user to just download as many games as possible for future offline use, just to be safe.
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indifferent to the considerations of its user base
To be fair, in this case at least, that represents 0.22% of their user base according to the latest hardware survey.
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Which only emphasizes that they're likely not going to give it any special consideration, yea? :P
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I would imagine a lot of people that run XP do not run it as their main OS and only boot into it when they want to run an old game. I run Win 7 on an SSD and dual boot into XP on a HDD if I have an old game I want to play with less problems. The Steam hardware survey would most likely report Win 7 for me even though I sometimes still run XP. I don't think the hardware survey accurately represent how many people run an old OS for compatibility.
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I wonder if the Steam client update server is the same as the server that it downloads games from. It would be interesting if you could install the latest version of Steam that works and then block all connections to the address that Steam uses for updates so it can't update. I wonder if they would block access for the old version of Steam to connect and download games.
Or maybe if you could download the game on a newer OS and then move the files to the old OS with Steam running in offline mode. I don't know how difficult this would be though because the file directories will be different and there may be registry entries.
Really Valve should just create a simple client that has no features other than just a list of your games and a button to install/uninstall. It doesn't need a steam overlay, friends, messages, screenshots, achievements, cards, just the ability to connect and download a game.
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A banner will appear on the Steam client if you're still using XP or Vista. If people somehow miss that banner, I doubt they'll see this PSA.
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I really hope they just stop updating the Steam client for people with outdated operating systems and let them continue to use the last version of Steam that worked. There are some games that don't work on anything newer than XP. I keep a copy of XP to dual boot into just for that reason.
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some games that don't work on anything newer than XP.
Can you say which?
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I don't remember which ones specifically, but over the years of collecting games, I remember seeing multiple games that only support up to XP and the games always get tons of negative reviews from people that complain that the game doesn't work on modern systems. I like playing old games and I was happy knowing I wouldn't have a problem playing these because when I upgraded to Win 7, I kept XP so I could boot into it if needed.
Most of the old Rockstar games say they only support up to XP or Vista. It seems that many of these have user made patches, but some people still have a lot of issues with things being broken in the games and crashing. Some of them seem to be better than others. Games like Manhunt, Max Payne, Bully, GTA IV. Pretty much every Rockstar game released before LA Noire.
Edit: If you do a search for: site:store.steampowered.com "XP Only", You can find tons of games on Steam that were only meant to work on systems up to XP. The results bring up the game manual, but if you just copy the game id from the URL, you can pull up the game on Steam. These games often work on newer OS's, but if you read the negative reviews, you will see tons of comments of people complaining of all kind of bugs and crashing.
There are probably hundreds of games that don't work properly on newer than XP and the devs don't care to do anything to fix them. Here are some just from the first page of results:
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas 2
Prince of Persia®: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Dark Messiah of Might & Magic
Call of Juarez
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.
That barely scratches the surface of games that don't run properly on newer OS's. If I want to play any of these, I would like to be able to play them on XP so I don't have to deal with the headache of finding and installing user patches and then probably still dealing with in game bugs.
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I don't think so. I think I remember reading somewhere that XP mode doesn't support Directx or hardware acceleration and will not work at all with games. I'm not exactly sure though because I haven't done much research.
Edit: It looks like Microsoft stopped supporting anything to do with XP and even deleted their help pages about it. Here is a cache of one of the help pages for XP Mode. It says:
"Windows XP Mode was primarily designed to help businesses move from Windows XP to Windows 7. It isn't optimized for graphic-intensive programs such as 3D games, nor is it well suited for programs with hardware requirements such as TV tuners."
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Ah, thanks! I guess I'll have to pull out my old XP discs, install to a VM, and buy from GOG if i want to play some of the old games that require XP.
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We got RT3 to run on Win7 Home 64bit until Windows released the update which nerfed CD Drive-based DRMs (and thus broke Microsoft Train Simulator, Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator, and others)
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It's sad, sure. XP is a dope OS and Vista... exists.
But the stats show that XP users don't use Steam that much. Win 7 is affordable nowadays and technology just requires you to upgrade once in a while. It sucks, but it's true. XP has existed for 16.5 years now.
I can't blame Valve for this. These OS' have held everyone else behind and this will be very good for the regular user.
If you have Win XP/Vista, then Win 7 is extremely cheap on gray market sites and on sites like Ebay. Good deals can be under 10€. :)
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Well, it's not surprising. After all, XP is 17 years old, they can't support it forever. If you're still using XP you can't play the vast majority of recent games anyway.
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It's a shame though, WinXP was damn good. But of course Microsoft had to abandon it to sell their shitty Win8/10/whatever :/
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7 is even better, so you might as well upgrade. Though third party support is slowly fading away, so eventually you'll be forced to switch to 10 anyway (i don't really complain, 10 is not THAT awful, at least compared to 8. After a few tweaks the UI is quite similar to 7 and performance-wise is about the same level).
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Yeah, I'm using Win7 currently, upgraded from XP when I got a new PC like three years ago :) And I know, I'd rather not think about the time when they stop supporting Win7 too.
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7 Professional is still supported by Microsoft until 2021! [Which means MS's decision to release Windows games that require 10, but won't run on their other officially supported systems, (IE Sea of Thieves) makes little sense to me, but anyway.]
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Supported until 2021, that means I probably can continue using Win7 till at least 2025 before I'll be forced to upgrade, that's some relatively good news.
And hah, a lot of things big companies do make little sense to me :D
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Unfortunately, Skylake (i3/5/7-6***) is the last generation of intel chipsets to support Windows 7. :(
MS also backed down from saying that they would stop supporting Skylake in 2017 if your OS is from one of 16 OEMs. (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11675/windows-7-windows-8-1-skylake-systems-supported) :D
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Is there an official/built-in way yet to make the UI look similar to 2000? (That's the look I use and prefer on my Win 7. Think it's called "classic" or something?). I know there's third-party options.
I know I'll have to upgrade to Win 10 eventually, but for now I'm sticking with Win 7 ... until Steam stops supporting that too, I guess ;)
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I'm on Win 7, would like to upgrade, but I really don't like 10...
Also thanks for the headsup about this, can't believe XP is so old!
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Neither did I, but having recently upgraded because of new hardware it's actually ok. Although I still prefer W7.
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I think it's probably my aversion to change. I like the visual upgrades, but I prefer the old style windows menu system. If you have a touchscreen, windows 10 totally makes sense, but otherwise I just find it very difficult to navigate. That's how I know I'm getting old!
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I always hated how they tried to automate everything, or make it more "user friendly". I can't think of any specific examples now, but it always irked me even starting when I went from DOS to windows 3.1... and every new version of windows had less and less of DOS in it, and it made me sad :'(
If you have a touchscreen, windows 10 totally makes sense, but otherwise I just find it very difficult to navigate
That's the kind of stuff that irked me too. I have been pretty happy with windows 7 for the most part, but can't stand the new start menu in 10... so haven't upgraded yet.
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You can actually edit the start menu to be more traditional in 10 too. In QA, they forced me to work on Windows 10 for a little bit and I was able to tweak it back to looking more 'normal'. Before I did that...to be honest, I really struggled with basics windows tasks ^_^;
Fun fact, I used to live in Ireland and when I first moved there about 13 years ago now, the shop I worked at still had DOS computers, startling at first, but you soon pick up the stuff you do everyday.
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WinXP already left its legacy. Now it's time to on. Great OS but the official support for it has ended long ago.
And Vista... No one cares, within reason ^^
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Windows XP (x64) is still my favorite OS by MS. I only upgraded to Windows 7 a few years ago because of certain features I wanted to use in DX11, but I still miss the ability to move file icons around wherever I wanted them in any folder without them automatically snapping to a grid.
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They should have a download-only client for XP users. That way, they'll still be able to play what they paid for.
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Good thing I never upgraded from my Win 98. Sucks to be a Win XP user now.
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You should at least upgrade to Win 98 SE! Get with the times!
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I'm still on MS-DOS 6.1
That whole GUI fad will probably blow over soon anyway.
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At least you can still play GORILLAS.BAS :P legend is that Bill Gates himself wrote the code for that game
and your username holds true
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People really still use XP? I mean sure I guess some businesses. but 10 was free for a long time. Still is? I know it sucks ass sometimes but you have to choose the lesser of two evils sometimes.
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I suppose they'll finally adress those few games with the warning that they don't run in anything newer than XP.
I'm not surprised about this, XP is really old at this point and nobody gives a shit about Vista so they are justified on pulling the plug. However, this does make me worry about the day when they'll drop win 7, I hope win 11 is out by that time.
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But M$ did say that W10 would be the last OS they would make.. Hopefully W11 does come out, but I doubt Microsoft would release another when SaaS solutions are the hype currently.
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I doubt the developers will do anything. Even big devs like Rockstar don't bother updating their old games and don't seem to care about the flood of negative reviews.
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There are games which don't support operating systems newer than XP so you'll get literally no way to run them. This is dumb.
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Well, you can always pirate them (I think it would be totally justified in such a situation). But yeah, it's still dumb.
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You could cut yourself with how edgy it is in here.
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The issue is that Steam has sold and still sells many older titles that only properly work under Windows XP (without unofficial engines/patches/workarounds). Some people also want to experience the game as it were originally, under older hardware. This just proves the point that all DRM is bad, you no longer own a product but a license to use for a specific period of time, when support ends you are screwed.
It's understandable that Steam is not able to support platforms forever, however instead of just preventing steam from working period on older platforms they should release some form of API where others can continue to provide limited support, at the very least the ability to download/install games that you own for their targeted platform.
Also Windows XP has such a HUGE library of games, software and specific utilities. There has to be a way to preserve it, for a long time. A lot of the older InstallShield stuff will not work properly on anything above Windows XP, also specific .dll files and such that are near impossible to get working. So much game editing software for various games, only has XP support as well.
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A lot of people I don't think are aware how things work. If people "buy" something on Steam you're just purchasing access to the game and not actually owning a copy. So yeah the $55 people just forked up to buy Jurassic World Evolution or $50 to buy Vampyr, they don't own them and never will if they buy them on Steam.
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I'm surprised Windows XP support hasn't been discontinued already, considering its age. It was a great OS but Windows 7 is pretty close to it in terms of usability. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that worked in XP but doesn't work in 7. I'd think a dedicated retro computer would run 95 or 98 since it's the 16 bit software that doesn't work well on 64 bit computers.
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I've posted a link to the blog as well as copied and pasted it right below the link for those who don't want to click.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577
Windows XP and Windows Vista Support
Starting on January 1 2019, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. This means that after that date the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows.
The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 7 and above.
For the remainder of 2018 Steam will continue to run and to launch games on Windows XP and Windows Vista, but other functionality in Steam will be somewhat limited. For example, new features such as the new Steam Chat will not be available. We encourage all users on these operating systems to upgrade to newer versions of Windows in order to have ongoing access to the latest features of Steam, and to ensure future access to all games and other Steam content.
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