steams new game download system doesnt work on windows 7 and now they are taking away games i played

How much time would you say you spend trying to get Windows 7 to work properly with everything, in general? Realistically.

I never experienced any advantage of newer Windows OS. After 7 the infamous 8 and 8.1 was a train wreck. I didn't get any new and remarkable feature out of 10. Now I'm using 11 because my mainboard's WiFI has no driver for 10.
The end of 10 will produce a huge amount of unnecessary e-waste and force people to buy new hardware while the smarter ones turn to Linux hopefully.
They always tell the public the new Windows is safer while security breaches are getting more severe year by year. Those updates serve technocrats who want to make a name for themselves for the most part.

Cringe.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A

As of January 1 2024, Steam stopped supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. Existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

To continue using of Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users should update to a more recent version of Windows. We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024, but we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date.

This change is required as core 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 10 and above.

We strongly encourage all Windows 7/8/8.1 users to update sooner rather than later. Microsoft ended security updates and technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020 and for Windows 8.1 in January 2023. Computers running these operating systems, when connected to the internet, are susceptible to new malware and other exploits which will not be patched. That malware can cause your PC, Steam and games to perform poorly or crash. That malware can also be used to steal the credentials for your Steam account or other services.

You own the content, but you are on an unsupported OS. They don't promise updates will work on it. It is just that now you have noticed an issue occurring on an unsupported OS.

You should probably look at getting an alternate OS. If not Windows, look at Linux distributions.

unfortunate, but you can try using open-shell, translucent TB, winaero tweaker/w11 debloater, among other programs, to try to remove telemetry, unfuck the OS, cripple the AI, and make w11/w10 feel a lot closer to the win7 that you're comfortable with...... at least that's what ive been doing

I can sympathize with you because the end of life of my OS W10 will be starting soon ! ^^
If it doesn't work in Windows 7 compatibility mode, however, i don't really know what you can do.

'the problem is steam is now taking games from me ive paid for and played for years or just a few months.'

Did they delete it from your account?

Is there an option on those games to rollback the game version? If that won't work, then other than changing the os I have no other idea.

Why still windows 7? I can understand for old games, but these are new-ish. Linux maybe?

I believe me and a lot of others mentioned things like this were going to happen when you were talking about staying on Windows 7. It's likely going to get even worse for you on Steam as time goes on. TBH Steam and games are the least of the worries if you're running Windows 7.

the dev of Cornucopia offered me a steam key to give to a friend with windows 11 that could download the game for me and send me the files. this would 100% work and i would have to do this with EVERY GAME that changes over to new download system and thats insane
you can download them on my steam deck, but if i try to move them they need other files cause its linux to windows so it doesnt work

Setup a VM with w10 and use current Steam to download there within.
That way can at least do all yourself on a single PC.

Are the games still registered to your account? Yes? Then Valve is taking nothing from you.
That the games no longer work or no longer can be downloaded is because you are using an unsupported OS. This is on you and you alone.
And you can't base any claim on EU laws if you are living in the USA and are a US citizen. You need to be a EU citizen for EU law to be applicable to you.

Seeing as Windows 10 is not being supported in a few months doesn't really have me that surprised by what you've stated.
But I don't think it's on purpose, their probably doing updates to the services to meet their own, or international, security requirements, and as such Windows 7 downloads aren't working correctly anymore.

My best recommendation is to either upgrade, or, if finances and/or system requirements are keeping you from doing that, change your OS to Linux since it's free, and has Proton which can force run non Linux based games (works really well on the SteamDeck).

Little question, if you have a GOG or Epic Store account, do you have these downloads problem with GOG / Epic Store recent downloaded games ?

Yeah, its really sucks, i dunno why some people harping on you, its literally artificial restriction that exists only to force people.

Mad respect for still sticking to W7.

Bummer that the Steam downloads don't work for you any more, but I don't think you can do much to change that other than moving to another OS.

As times goes by, you'll see more and more restrictions to it. You need to consider an alternative like Linux
It doesn't matter that you "bought with Win7 support" - the time and energy you're devoting to this - dozens of posts about it - make it simply not worthwhile. Is it really worth it dying on that hill?

Have you tried any command line tools like SteamCMD, steam-cli or DepotDownloader?

While I can understand your frustation. The changes are mostly due to upgrading systems and security.
But send a message to steam, they might check into that, they may have a solution and not even be intentional but rather overlooked.

The worse upgrade yet will be the tons of machines that aren't compatible with windows 11 making them vulnerable and turned to "trash" all over the world. But again, security must evolve as there were A LOT and still are many other flaws.

I feel for you, especially since Win7 was the first and last really good Windows, but expecting Valve (or any developer) to keep their Software running on old OS forever is simply unrealistic and you will keep running into problems like this.

Two possible solutions:

1. Switch to GOG. Yes, you would have to buy your games again, but they dont force you to use their launcher, so if you download a game and it runs on Win7, you would theoretically still be able to install and run them a 100 years from now.

2. Use Linux. Nowadays its easy to use, great for gaming (apart from a few competitive games like Online-FPS), free, supported by Valve and I´d imagine it requires a lot less tinkering than maintaining a Win7 installation in 2025. I just recently made the switch from Win10 to Kubuntu and couldn´t be any happier.

Apart from that, the command line tools Andrewskis mentioned could really work. I´d give that a try first.

Try using depot downloader (as Andrewski sugested). I used it recently not just to download game, but to download specific version of the game (pre-censorshipped Skullgirls). Worked as intended. Bad side is that it was slow as hell and there is no progression bar anywhere xD I just left it running for whole night and in the morning it was done :)

I'm not techy enough to know how ridiculous this suggestion is, so apologies in advance...

Can you set up a dual boot on your current system, Win7 and Win11? And then just game on Win11?

just lost tower untie a game i have over 2000+ hours in and AK-xolotl: Together game i was 100%ing yesterday