You won’t be able to access your games bought on Steam if you’re still on Windows XP or Vista beginning January 1, 2019

Valve just announced it is stopping support for Steam on Windows XP and Vista beginning January 1,2019.

While this may only affect 0.22% of the Steam userbase (on XP), that number is pretty big given how massive the total number of active Steam users is. The full statement from Valve is below:

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.

It is disappointing that they aren’t providing a legacy client for those versions of Windows to at least be able to access games bought on Steam that support those older versions. Games will continue to run until the end of the year on those versions of Windows but after that, game over.

Thanks, Resetera.