According to Valve, the reason comes as some core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. Valve also says that future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.

Valve ended support for Windows XP and Windows Vista back in 2019, and the latest move will not be a big deal considering that less than 2 percent of Steam users are currently running on Windows 7, Windows 8, or the Windows 8.1 OS.