Considering they’ve cut support with every previous version of Windows, I would say your prospects aren’t looking very hopeful.

Steam nolonger supports your OS nore window 7.
Time to upgrade to Windows 11 as windows 10 also expires Oct 2025
But Steam will accept W10.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A

The time and money to support older OSs that less than 2% of users were using is a total water of resources.

Older systems and OSs get dropped due to a lack of users and due to technology advancement that requires new tech to protect against bad actors.

Originally posted by Orcat:

Recently I can't download any game successfully. I saw someone said reinstallation of Steam client may help, but I am reluctant to use unofficial installer. If I can't download my game, surely I won't buy any more game.

The backend was updated to a compression solution that is not available on pre-10 versions of Windows. It won't matter what version of the client you use as you will still get files that can't be decompressed on your chosen version of the OS.

While you may have your reasons for not upgrading the OS, Valve is not obligated to continue supporting it.

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by Orcat:

Recently I can't download any game successfully. I saw someone said reinstallation of Steam client may help, but I am reluctant to use unofficial installer. If I can't download my game, surely I won't buy any more game.

The backend was updated to a compression solution that is not available on pre-10 versions of Windows. It won't matter what version of the client you use as you will still get files that can't be decompressed on your chosen version of the OS.

While you may have your reasons for not upgrading the OS, Valve is not obligated to continue supporting it.

zstd can work on any system. The reason Windows 7 didn't get the update is that Chromium dropped support for Windows 7, so Valve would need to maintain two separate versions of the Steam Client with entirely different codebases (or downgrade Chromium and lose a bunch of security fixes) in order to serve 0.07% of computers connected to Steam.

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

The backend was updated to a compression solution that is not available on pre-10 versions of Windows. It won't matter what version of the client you use as you will still get files that can't be decompressed on your chosen version of the OS.

While you may have your reasons for not upgrading the OS, Valve is not obligated to continue supporting it.

zstd can work on any system. The reason Windows 7 didn't get the update is that Chromium dropped support for Windows 7, so Valve would need to maintain two separate versions of the Steam Client with entirely different codebases (or downgrade Chromium and lose a bunch of security fixes) in order to serve 0.07% of computers connected to Steam.

Gonna be interesting hearing the excuses with Win 10.

In any event, a legacy launcher is all they need.

Originally posted by Orcat:

I hope Steam can offer an older version client supporting Windows 8.1.

Go ask where the older client version supporting W98 is .

Originally posted by xBCxRangers:

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

zstd can work on any system. The reason Windows 7 didn't get the update is that Chromium dropped support for Windows 7, so Valve would need to maintain two separate versions of the Steam Client with entirely different codebases (or downgrade Chromium and lose a bunch of security fixes) in order to serve 0.07% of computers connected to Steam.

Gonna be interesting hearing the excuses with Win 10.

In any event, a legacy launcher is all they need.

Given that zstd has been the industry standard for... 7 years? (It's even supported by all major web browsers since last year.) I don't think Valve's going to need to switch compression algorithms again for the entire lifetime of Windows 11 or 12.

My Windows 10 computer is currently in limbo, only used for compiling new versions of one of my games, and everything else I do happens on Linux. Once I can't use it anymore, I'm either going to have to get the build system set up on Linux, pass the responsibility of updating that game to someone else, or just stop updating that game.

I won't have to worry about that for at least a few years, though.

Originally posted by xBCxRangers:

Gonna be interesting hearing the excuses with Win 10.

In any event, a legacy launcher is all they need.

The Steam client will continue running on Windows 10 64-bit and 32-bit games will continue to be supported.

Only Windows 10 32bit support is being dropped.

Why use blocky Win 8?

Why use blocky Win 8?

I love the full-screen Start menu.
Sorry I can't use the drop menu on the right side of your post. Probably because of some recent update of Steam website.

The backend was updated to a compression solution that is not available on pre-10 versions of Windows. It won't matter what version of the client you use as you will still get files that can't be decompressed on your chosen version of the OS.

Actually that's what I expected, but I remember seeing someone said some Win10 users encounter the same issue.

I love the full-screen Start menu.

So I didn't upgrade to Win10 when it's free to upgrade. Just make the post more complete. I can't edit my post.

They won't release an older client to be compatible in all liklihood as they haven't the last 7 times they discontinued support. It will be a few years at minimum before support is dropped most likely, and it could be years after that before it stops working (or days).

So you have time to upgrade