I'm pretty sure this is about modern DRM and not Webkit engine compatibility issues.

Not a huge surprise since extended support for Win8.1 and security updates for Win7 ceased earlier this year. This is why I stopped buying games on Steam back when they dropped WinXP.

On the other hand, GOG has DRM-free offline installers which you can download and then freely use on anything from Windows 2000 and up. Even if their games are sometimes more expensive compared to Steam, at least I actually own them, and can choose how and where I want to play them.

It was a matter of time. I don't see it as a huge issue, but some convenience will be lost.

A very bad decision from Valve. One's gaming library is essentially banned from working on older OSes.

Reminder - windows 10 goes EOL in 2025.

After the XP client debacle, I have stopped buying games on Steam.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-28, 06:02:

On the other hand, GOG has DRM-free offline installers which you can download and then freely use on anything from Windows 2000 and up.

I don't even use those installers as-is, I extract them and "manually install". That is one of the big things I like about GOG still is even after them pushing "GOG Galaxy" around they still offer the "offline installers".

Worth mentioning, the default Windows version for Wine was recently set to "Windows 10". It used to be defaulted to "Windows 7" for quite a long time until Wine 8.1 came out.

my Windows 7 project PCs are getting more useless. First Spotify no longer works and now steam - the two programs I use the most. It was only a couple of months back that Spotify stopped working on XP!

I am surprised that EA didn't take the opportunity to have their new EA App not support Windows 7 but it does seem to.

For my PCs this does mean that XP is becoming equally as useful/useless again as they'll support similar software. So I get my EAX back!

Do hack's or workarounds exist for when steam drops support?
Only use steam for 1 game (C&C remaster) and only ever single player so doesn't need to authenticate with servers anywhere.

Hacks exist for many individual games, hacks that entirely eliminate the necessity of even installing Steam. The cracks for the games must be downloaded individually. If Steam isn't required any more, the games should than magically run even under Windows 7 / 8.1 with appropriate cracks which strip all DRM as well.

You can use steamless and goldberg steam emu for games that just use steam drm. In some cases youll need to use the sse emu or revemu. If the game uses other drm then you'll need to use another wrapper like the epic emu or a crack. For origin games use a crack or the origin unwrap and origin emu. For ubishit games you'll need to use a crack or a ubisoft emu.
That should cover most games.
I should have my spreadsheet up detailing what to use for each game by then so people can run "their" games without the store clients the
way it should be.

I can dump an export of my current folder containing what to use for each game to a txt if anyone is interested.

Really though people should push back and force valve to to provide people a way to play the games they purchased (remove the cef shit that no one needs) instead of breaking them due to their perpetual laziness but they won't due to the same laziness.

If that's seen as unreasonable ( it isnt) then force valve to ensure all games that will stop working are fully compatible with Proton by the drop date.....haha like that would happen.

/EDIT added the Steam Subscriber Agreement to op
//EDIT Attached export. Don't ask me where to get anything and don't post anything on vogons

DosFreak wrote on 2023-03-28, 10:30:

Really though people should push back and force valve to to provide people a way to play the games they purchased (remove the cef shit that no one needs) instead of breaking them due to their perpetual laziness but they won't due to the same laziness.

The whole CEF thing seriously did not need to happen. I can understand needing a embedded browser because the store webpage is, well a webpage... but why did suddenly everything else need CEF? The library? The chats? What was wrong with the "native" code that was there previously?

mihai wrote on 2023-03-28, 06:46:

Reminder - windows 10 goes EOL in 2025.

Windows 10 will most likely still receive security updates after 2025. Realistically, W10 support will continue until 2028-2030.

What's so special with DRM and Windows 10(+) if Steam runs on Linux? These are not the same.

I'm not a heavy steam user so I probably can't comment on the trouble this may be. I think I'm essentially DRM free person anyway.

So you don't think Valve would rather have all the Win7/8 holdouts move to Linux? Luckily for me I've been on Linux since before WinXP, so I don't have to migrate a large encumbered library. Steam didn't exist back then, as I never bothered when it was Windows only.

To Add:
I read the message about Embedded Chromium in Steam as the reason. Ok so I know something about Chromium, having dealt too much with it myself. Yes Google is making decision on where to support Chromium, and I think the next Axing has been pre-Win10 support. There is strange things going on with Chromium, but one I can tell you that these changes often do not have to be. Valve could reverse the changes and fork Chromium if they wish. But I guess they do not. I have done that myself to keep support on older systems. So I will go try to find out what is unique about Windows 10 and maybe mention it here about what could be done.

So I am starting to remember now about this. At the very least, Google is dropping support because they want to move their build platform off of Windows 7 and to Windows 10. This is because Microsoft does not support Windows 7/8 in Visual Studio 2022.

You could blame Microsoft itself for this. But there is more about the strange behavior I see with Google though. For example, I know that a beta version of LLVM 16 was being required to compile Chromium 110, where no one in the Linux community really would have deployed that version yet. Incidentially, the build instructions on Windows say they also use LLVM (clang) when they build in Visual Studio. I don't know if these two things are connected, but I would say that Google is kind of partially to blame for pushing bleeding edge stuff. I want to complain about some changes related to all this going into their javascript engine that I ran into, but luckily I think they fixed those bugs in 111, and goes beyond this topic. So you need a really hard bleeding edge toolset if you want to compile chromium, which will be a burden to Valve if they are to update their embedded version.

So there is some reason for Valve to say what they said, even though it is unfortunate for people that have been avoiding win10. It may continue to work on Win7 if they want to allow it, but understand that Google/Chromium do not care about anything older than bleeding edge and it will probably break.

There'll probably be ways. When Blender 3.0 dropped 7 support, some github projects about making replacement DLLs for the VS2020 core path OS backstabbing were had to get it to function again, and that regression had trickled down from Python's insistence on using the latest VS runtimes that are exclusive to 10/11 (in the face of smartasses that uselessly link the 'latest' VS2019 runtimes like they know it all)

new core path dlls are the new SHGetFolderPathEx.

Added to github
https://github.com/vogonsorg/OfflineGames/tree/main
https://github.com/vogonsorg/OfflineGames/blo … es_03282023.txt

At the time, I bought the DVD version of Skyrim, but didn't pay attention to the fact that it required me to create a Steam account and install it. I still have the computer from then with XP, but now Steam does not support XP for a long time. The same thing happens to me with other games that worked on XP. And the same will happen with Win 7, I have the first Tomb Raider reboot from 2013, I even preordered it, but again It won't work on Win 7 because Steam won't work on Win 7.

In my opinion, Steam/Valve is synonymous with stealing.
The games I bought were stolen from me. To play them, I have to use hacking methods... so why buy games on Steam if they will never be yours, and you have to hack your own games.
Personally, I am very angry and as I say, I feel that Steam stole my money. A couple of days ago I installed the client on Win 7 to remember what games I had, and another frustration, Fallout 3, it also ran on XP
It's been years since I bought anything on Steam.
And, I have computers with Win1 0 capable of running those games, but I want to do with my paid games what I like, and it is playing then on an OS supported by the games when I've bought then.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-28, 20:42:

The games I bought were stolen from me. To play them, I have to use hacking methods... so why buy games on Steam if they will never be yours, and you have to hack your own games.

I think that's greatly mischaracterize what's happening. The games aren't taken from you. You can still play them whenever you want without hacking them, just not on whatever OS you want. That isn't good from a real hardware retro enthusiast standpoint, but Steam never intended to serve a niche market like that. And the games never were yours to begin with. You have end user license. Valve never said it'll support with its client all versions of Windows to the end of times, but it said that you can access your entire game library through your client, and Valve upholds that. Steam is not and never was a platform for real hardware retro so don't act like something unexpected happened.

Steam in the beginning also supported W98, just say as a reminder. And still to this day it has a lot of games that are from that era.

If you want something really baffling, think about Half-Life 2. It was W98 compatible, but those versions no longer work without cracking on W98, then it went Steamless DRM-free, but the current version doesn't work on XP either. It's like GoG without all the benefits of GoG.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-28, 20:42:

At the time, I bought the DVD version of Skyrim, but didn't pay attention to the fact that it required me to create a Steam acco […]
Show full quote

At the time, I bought the DVD version of Skyrim, but didn't pay attention to the fact that it required me to create a Steam account and install it. I still have the computer from then with XP, but now Steam does not support XP for a long time. The same thing happens to me with other games that worked on XP. And the same will happen with Win 7, I have the first Tomb Raider reboot from 2013, I even preordered it, but again It won't work on Win 7 because Steam won't work on Win 7.

In my opinion, Steam/Valve is synonymous with stealing.
The games I bought were stolen from me. To play them, I have to use hacking methods... so why buy games on Steam if they will never be yours, and you have to hack your own games.
Personally, I am very angry and as I say, I feel that Steam stole my money. A couple of days ago I installed the client on Win 7 to remember what games I had, and another frustration, Fallout 3, it also ran on XP
It's been years since I bought anything on Steam.
And, I have computers with Win1 0 capable of running those games, but I want to do with my paid games what I like, and it is playing then on an OS supported by the games when I've bought then.

This is what annoys me. The fact that a lot of boxed copes of modern games still don't include the actual game, just some bonus items (as box copies are now aimed at collectors) and a steam download key.
At least include the software. Games that require activation still make me nervous (as activation servers can be shut down) but at least I can install the game and attempt to crack it if/when this happens.

Although this is the developer, publishers fault not Steams as other games do still release games on physical media. It typically costs more but I'm fine with that.

And the games never were yours to begin with.

EULA is misleading. Games are yours, but Steam itself is not, that's a free service. So Valve is not obliged to keep system requirement from 20 years ago or give you capabilities to resell games, for example. But at the same time, they can't legally prevent you from selling your account.