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FYI: Steam drops XP/Vista in 2019

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Reply 160 of 236, by DosFreak

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I setup a new XP VM and Steam loads fine:

Installed XP SP3 slipstreamed with Onepiece post SP3 and POS updates to Nov 2018
Copied latest Steam client to XP desktop
Installed steam client
Executed steam client
Steam started downloading the latest updated version of the client
Once download it did the extraction and update and the steam logon screen displayed
Entered credentials and Steam loaded.

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Reply 161 of 236, by xjas

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Wow. With all the brou-ha about XP support, seems nobody's talking about the fact that Steam is also dropping support for OS/X 10.6-10.10, a three year old OS, which had its last point version released in 2017, i.e. last year. I didn't even know about this until today!

And yes, they're blaming Chrome, as you'd expect.

Honestly, I play far more Steam games on my Macbook than I do on anything running XP, so guess which one I'm more annoyed about.

I don't think I have any OS/X exclusives on Steam, and a lot of the stuff I own on there is DRM-free, but guess I've got some downloading to do. The irritating thing is I was planning to wipe & reinstall this thing sometime soon, so even if I back up the games, I'll probably lose cloud saves and stuff. (And no, I'm not touching anything Apple made post-10.10. They should have called the new one version "ten-foot-pole.")

To be honest, I've got far better gaming machines than the Macbook for both other major OSes, but they don't fit in a carry bag. The Macbook is the one I lug around everywhere when I travel.

I was already annoyed enough about Dropbox. Guess which platform I won't be spending any more money on?

Another fun thing is the next OS/X version will drop support for 32-bit software. You'll have a window of like four OS versions to play 95% of the titles on the platform. And then they'll drop those too. How many Steam games are you gonna be able to play beyond that point? Twelve? Maybe the same number of Mac Steam users by then. Unbelievable.

As I said in my Dropbox thread, "hope you Win7 fans don't get too complacent. You're next."

Edit: Apparently they only issued the notice a few days ago. And Steam will stop running on January 1st. THAT'S a Fuck You if I've ever seen one.

Edit 2: as I kind of expected, so far about 80% of my game library runs just fine when copied to another PC that's never had Steam installed on it. Of course, YMMV. I can post the list if anyone wants.

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Reply 162 of 236, by DosFreak

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Please do I'd like to add the games to my guide. See my sig.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/ … 479063987206925

Is it possible for Mac users to use the Windows ver of steam under Wine on MacOS or would it make more sense to dual-boot or install Linux or Windows 10 on those machines? Alternative is a virtual machine but 3D performance would be horrible.

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Reply 163 of 236, by xjas

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^^ running the Windows version in WINE is possible, but I never tried. AFAIK 64-bit binary support is fairly recent. I tend to use WINE as a Windows XP-emulator but it does support stuff for newer Windows versions, just don't know how well.

Honestly, the next time I wipe & reinstall my Macbook, I was planning to set it up to dual-boot OS/X 10.8 & Linux anyway, but that doesn't help for the couple odd games in my library that don't have native Linux ports and don't work on Proton. I have software on here that is known to break on 10.11+ so "up"grading would be a huge problem.

-----

Back to the games - here's my list. Feel free to copy this.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tF8T0 … dit?usp=sharing

Green: works. Yellow: not sure yet. Red: definitely fails because Steam is missing.

Procedure: I installed all games via Steam on my 2012 Macbook Pro (some of these are old installs I've already beaten.) Launched the game & made sure it was working. Tried to save some preferences or a savegame if I hadn't already. Copied the game from steamapps/common over to a generic directory on my 2009 Mac Mini, along with relevant preferences if I could find them. Launched each game & watched what happened.

I haven't done that extensive testing, but I did make sure every one launched & you could get into the game itself. For the most part, DLC (soundtracks, but some game addons, e.g. QUBE) copied over with the game. Saved games and profiles were hit & miss but can usually be found in ~/Library/Application Support if they aren't in the game directory.

- I'll be updating this as I figure out how to get more of these running or other things like savegame locations.
- I don't know what happens in most of these if you try to save a game or get an achievement. It's entirely possible that could break something.
- I'm willing to bet a lot of the ones that say stuff like "crashed on launch" or "opened & immediately quit" are looking for some Steam presence that's not there. If there's an equivalent of SmartSteamEmu for OS/X & Linux, I'd love to know about it.
- A couple of yellow ("not sure") games have system requirements that exceed the Mac Mini (usually GPU) - i.e. Distance, Overload - and didn't run. I don't know if this is because of that or because of a Steam requirement.

I've also requested a refund for a couple of my bigger purchases on there due to this issue (ones I've barely even played yet), and have contacted the support teams for a couple other titles directly to see about transferring my license to a DRM-free platform. Will update the thread as I hear back.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 164 of 236, by xjas

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I updated my spreadsheet. Tested every Mac-compatible game in my library (no Proton); 14 out of 33 run right out of the box and I was able to copy my saved games & configurations over on all but a few. (Antichamber's saves were in ~/Library/Application Support/Unreal Tournament 3. 😠)

I haven't run into a game that lets you launch and play it, but then chokes partway in when it can't find Steam for achievements or something yet, but I haven't tried everything extensively.

Overall I'm not too disappointed in this result, especially since I own some of the non-working games DRM-free on other platforms (italicized titles - BIT.TRIP & Escape Goat games as-of last night in a fit of irritation & thanks to the GOG sale. 😜)

I feel like a few of the yellow ones especially should be solveable, especially ones that give the error "Player data archive not found at '[...]/data.unity3d', using local filesystem" - I suspect these are looking for cloud saves. When I get time I'm going to try copying that file over from my non-Steam version of Overload. Some sort of Steam emulator for Mac is clearly needed for the other titles.

Honestly Out There Somewhere is killing me the most, along with La-Mulana 1 & 2. I like to play those kinds of titles on my Macbook while I'm travelling, and I don't have any other options. (My refund request for the La-Mulana bundle got denied; "too long since the date of purchase." No acknowledgement of the fact that I won't be able to play it in two weeks.)

Also nice to know my entire Steam library (except Quake Champions, which doesn't have a Mac port) fits on an old 60GB HDD. Backup freeze achieved.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 165 of 236, by realnc

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xjas wrote:

Wow. With all the brou-ha about XP support, seems nobody's talking about the fact that Steam is also dropping support for OS/X 10.6-10.10, a three year old OS, which had its last point version released in 2017, i.e. last year. I didn't even know about this until today!

Yeah. I don't know what's gonna happen when they start only supporting recent macOS versions. Last year, we published a game on Steam and we stated in the system requirements that you need macOS 10.10 to 10.13. What will happen years from now when 10.13 is no longer supported? Will we be responsible for updating the game indefinitely? We'll have moved on by then. If the game stops working in future macOS versions, but Steam doesn't work anymore in 10.13, then that leaves people with no way to install and play the game on 10.13 if they don't have access to a supported version of macOS to copy the files over to the old Mac.

It looks like there could be some legal issue here with not supporting systems that were supported at the time you bought the games. From the developer's perspective, the system requirements clearly state what is supported. But from Valve's perspective, they'll point you to their EULA which probably has a clause for this. So, who's responsible?

Reply 166 of 236, by The Serpent Rider

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So, who's responsible?

Nobody cares really, there's quite a lot of old games with system requirements stuck in the limbo: Windows 2000, Pentium 3, etc.

Take for example Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 167 of 236, by xjas

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Allright, launched Steam, uninstalled everything I own a DRM free version of, updated all my remaining games & downloaded all the DLC, put Steam into offline mode, quit, and added a Steam.cfg with the lines described in DosFreak's guide. I'm as ready for the Steampocalypse as I can be. I'll let you guys know how I make out.

Incidentally Distance updated itself to a Christmas menu theme & lovely remix of Carol of the Bells so I guess I have that forever. 😜

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 168 of 236, by The Serpent Rider

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updated all my remaining games & downloaded all the DLC

That's not required though. You can "install" games in offline mode by just moving game files and corresponding steamappid.

Although it's easier to just hack the game and forget about Steam DRM cancer alltogether. Offline Steam is pretty much useless anyway.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 169 of 236, by xjas

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I am unaware of an "easy" way to "hack the game" on Mac OS/X. If there's a guide to hex editing executables or something out there I'd love to see it. AFAIK there's no general purpose steam emu (yet??) either.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 171 of 236, by CelGen

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I had a nightmare last night where I was playing Half-Life and This popped up on the screen.

vyrdxTw.jpg

It was terrifying. How could this possibly happen??!
Then I woke up with a hangover and realized I wasn't dreaming. I was just super drunk last night and TODAY ACTUALLY WAS ARMAGEDDON.

DH7nrFV.jpg

This is....This is it folks. This is how the world ends.

emot-science.gif "It's science. I ain't gotta explain sh*t" emot-girl.gif

Reply 172 of 236, by SpiRec

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I am one of the few using Steam under Vista. The only thing that I did so far is to add the "-noverifyfiles" parameter to the command line in the shortcut for Steam before launching the client a few minutes ago. Most of the things still seem to work, but I can't log in any more to add games to my wishlist or to buy games from the store. (I can do it in my browser though.) I don't know if that's temporary or not.

Reply 173 of 236, by CelGen

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It is currently 25 minutes past the hour and I can still login with an XP client and run Half-Life.
At this point I am assuming if I go to bed by the time I wake up tomorrow Steam will of autobooted me off and will no longer reconnect, otherwise it might remain connected until steam quits or the system crashes.

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Reply 174 of 236, by The Serpent Rider

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Realistically update will be rolled after holidays.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 175 of 236, by shamino

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I had a simplified, single drive Steam install set up on a Phenom2 six months ago, but In typical fashion I didn't finish downloading games and wrapping this up until the last couple days when it became urgent.
I'm glad that the client was still working - I was worried that it would be broken ahead of schedule. But it worked out.

I also included a working install of "Test Drive Unlimited 2" which has it's own (non-Steam) activation scheme. I don't trust that game to be activatable in the future. Online multiplayer has been dead for a long time.

My paranoia led to a progression of 3 disk images - one before any recent Steam updates, another after the "Death warning update" and installing some games, and a 3rd after activating a new game (that I've had sitting in shrinkwrap for a few years, forgotten).
I was downloading that additional game on 12/31, glad it wasn't too big for my slow internet to handle in time.

Hopefully the disk image isn't too picky about the hardware - if that motherboard dies I don't want to have to track down a twin to replace it.

I'm thinking maybe I should boot back into the install and export the whole Windows registry. Not sure what parts of it might be important if I try to transfer the Steam install to another XP system, and can't run the stub installer anymore.

Reply 176 of 236, by xjas

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Still alive. 😜

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Played a bunch of Escape Goat 2 just now. Saves are working and I even set an achievement. No complaints about being offline.

To be honest, I've slowly been filling in the blanks & I only have a few games left I can't play in some way without the Steam client, and almost none of them are ones I want to play on this thing with its integrated GPU. La-Mulana 2 is still the biggest outstanding question, although recent updates seem to have it running on Linux under Proton, which it didn't before.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 177 of 236, by SquallStrife

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CelGen wrote:

This is....This is it folks. This is how the world ends.

I get that it's a bummer, and agree with a lot of the comments in this thread, but this kind of melodrama doesn't help.

It makes us, as a community, look like spoiled brats and drama queens.

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Reply 178 of 236, by shamino

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SquallStrife wrote:
CelGen wrote:

This is....This is it folks. This is how the world ends.

I get that it's a bummer, and agree with a lot of the comments in this thread, but this kind of melodrama doesn't help.

It makes us, as a community, look like spoiled brats and drama queens.

I'll give Valve a partial pass if I see a best effort on their part to give XP clients the most usable experience possible on the 12/2018 client. But if they go on a self-righteous "Windows XP must be killed" warpath then my attitude toward them will sour considerably.

I'll perceive some decent goodwill from Valve if the last XP-supporting client doesn't try to nuke itself and require unusual efforts to keep it from doing so. I'll be happier if the 12/2018 WinXP client not only knows not to nuke itself, but is also allowed to continue downloading and authorizing games in an Online state for as long as it's actually able to do so (and not merely because the calendar says it should stop). Even happier still if Valve doesn't try to quickly break that basic functionality just for the sake of doing so.
We'll see.

What's occurring now with Steam is an issue with online DRM that deserves to be highlighted, and will eventually deprive ownership from anyone who doesn't slavishly follow the latest trendy gadgets and OSes that somebody else decides we should all be using.

Personally, the last version of WIndows that I can stand is Windows 7. It's next on the chopping block. I'm hoping that Linux gaming will continue to gain a lot more ground and start performing at the same level as Windows. There are things about the support experience in Linux that I don't like, but I'll take it over Windows 10.
To be fair here, I will give Valve/Steam credit for being the major reason that Linux gaming has grown to the point that it has thus far. Pretty soon our choices will simply be Windows 10 or Linux.

Anyway, as far as Steam on XP is concerned I think I'm set. I only have a few Steam-dependent games that I care much about, and they don't need to be in Online Mode. I just tested my disk image on another hard drive and it worked as expected. I guess the next step is to see what happens when I plug it into a completely different computer.

Reply 179 of 236, by Crank9000

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shamino wrote:

Personally, the last version of WIndows that I can stand is Windows 7. It's next on the chopping block. I'm hoping that Linux gaming will continue to gain a lot more ground and start performing at the same level as Windows. There are things about the support experience in Linux that I don't like, but I'll take it over Windows 10.

I doubt Linux will get any real boost unless Microsoft does something really dumb like slapping unreasonably high cost subscription model on Windows that drives people away in meaningful numbers.

And out of curiosity, did you give Windows 10 a real chance before making your mind about it? I kept my distance from it as long as I could (well done Microsoft PR department), but when I finally gave it a chance I realized it really is the best Windows to date and I really wouldn't want to go back to Windows 7 any more. Sure there are a few things I don't like about Windows 10, but I can work around most of them. The two large updates per year cycle is the one thing I dislike the most, it should be dropped to max one per year if you ask me.