4 ms·

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam s

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

Rebelgecko 3y ago
They recently dropped support for MacOS 10.12. They're cutting it close since many Valve games only work on MacOS versions <= 10.13
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Apple hasn’t support MacOS 10.12 for four years. That Steam still supports it is amazing to me.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Have you actually used steam lately? They did something to it on Mac that made it reset to the store page every time it loses focus and gains it back. Including when you try to read the code in your mail to be able to login, or when entering 3d secure codes for a purchase. Basically you can't use it without another device to check your mail/texts. It's been going on for at least 2 months.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      I use Steam regularly, I don’t game on a Mac regularly. To be fair I don’t think most people use Macs for gaming. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them.
      - nottorp 3y ago
        > Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them. It's not gaming if it has IAPs. I've given up on even reading about mobile "games" when they all went IAP. I'm too poor to afford that.
        slowhadoken 3y ago
        I don't play many mobile games but I tested The Battle of Polytopia when it was in beta and I still play it today. So it's not a complete loss. Android has solid emulation scene though.
slowhadoken 3y ago
It depends on what you think of as perfect. Microsoft stopped supporting XP in like 2009 and Windows 8 in 2016. I run all my windows games on my Deck using proton. Games that ran on Windows 95 usually aren’t supported by the companies that made them decades ago but fans patch them. I got Vampire the Masquerade running on my Deck with little effort. So “perfect”? No. But functional? Absolutely.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  Yeah, I played Descent (1995) yesterday on my deck without needing to do anything but invert the y-axis on the keypad (which is non-standard). Aside from that the game ran flawlessly. I’ve played a number of my childhood games on the deck and been incredibly impressed.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    Wow I haven’t thought about Descent in a long time. I’m getting flashbacks. But yeah, I’m very impressed. I’m actually kind of proud they’re an American company too.
spookie 3y ago
Is it a Valve problem, or a Microsoft one at that point? Nevertheless, you could still download your game and remove the thin DRM layer (tools available to do so), and then play them on your Windows<10 machines.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Valve problem. Selling merchandise you know/stated the customer can't use is negligent at best, malicious at worst. Obligatory IANAL.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    Seems like the obligation falls on developers and studios. It’s Capcom’s responsibility to keep Street Fighter X Tekken working because Capcom is the seller. Fortunately the community usually warns buyers about abandonware and you can always get a refund.
    - HideousKojima 3y ago
      Also if you're playing on Linux a lot of those older games run perfectly through WINE, better than they run on modern Windows.
      - slowhadoken 3y ago
        wine is rolled into proton.
        ripdog 3y ago
        Please excuse me while I become 'that guy', but Proton is a distribution of Wine with a bunch of patches and extra components like DXVK. The vast majority of proton is unmodified wine.
        slowhadoken 3y ago
prmoustache 3y ago
> Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. Why wouldn't they work well? Every time backward compatibility is mentionned, Microsoft Windows is praised as the best example of it and people brag they can still run everything they used to run in 1995.
- superjan 3y ago
  Well, there is overhead in testing additional windows versions, the libraries you use may use only deprecated SSL versions, and one needs to be careful not to connect them to the public internet because of unpatched security issues. And it does not allow the use of new platform features… iOS is worse: you can’t roll back iOS updates, so you need to keep one piece of hardware around for each version you test.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  Microsoft has great backwards compatibility, but it isn't perfect. Those games might be coded to 1990s standards, e.g. using old graphics APIs that don't support modern GPUs.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Which ones? Apart from DOS games and windows 3.x which I would treat separatly the only graphics api I could think of was Glide for which there are modern wrappers like nglide.
    - indigo945 3y ago
      Parts of DX5 and previous, such as the "retained mode", are missing from current versions of Windows entirely. Much of the remaining implementation is buggy and introduces render artifacts. Open source projects such as dgVoodoo offer a solution to run old games, by re-implementing old DirectX and Glide on top of current DirectX [1], similar to how Wine runs DX games on Linux on top of OpenGL or Vulkan. [1]: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2 https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2

Rebelgecko 3y ago

They recently dropped support for MacOS 10.12. They're cutting it close since many Valve games only work on MacOS versions <= 10.13

slowhadoken 3y ago
Apple hasn’t support MacOS 10.12 for four years. That Steam still supports it is amazing to me.
- nottorp 3y ago
  Have you actually used steam lately? They did something to it on Mac that made it reset to the store page every time it loses focus and gains it back. Including when you try to read the code in your mail to be able to login, or when entering 3d secure codes for a purchase. Basically you can't use it without another device to check your mail/texts. It's been going on for at least 2 months.
  - slowhadoken 3y ago
    I use Steam regularly, I don’t game on a Mac regularly. To be fair I don’t think most people use Macs for gaming. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      > Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them. It's not gaming if it has IAPs. I've given up on even reading about mobile "games" when they all went IAP. I'm too poor to afford that.
      - slowhadoken 3y ago
        I don't play many mobile games but I tested The Battle of Polytopia when it was in beta and I still play it today. So it's not a complete loss. Android has solid emulation scene though.

slowhadoken 3y ago

It depends on what you think of as perfect. Microsoft stopped supporting XP in like 2009 and Windows 8 in 2016. I run all my windows games on my Deck using proton. Games that ran on Windows 95 usually aren’t supported by the companies that made them decades ago but fans patch them. I got Vampire the Masquerade running on my Deck with little effort. So “perfect”? No. But functional? Absolutely.

joshstrange 3y ago
Yeah, I played Descent (1995) yesterday on my deck without needing to do anything but invert the y-axis on the keypad (which is non-standard). Aside from that the game ran flawlessly. I’ve played a number of my childhood games on the deck and been incredibly impressed.
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Wow I haven’t thought about Descent in a long time. I’m getting flashbacks. But yeah, I’m very impressed. I’m actually kind of proud they’re an American company too.

spookie 3y ago

Is it a Valve problem, or a Microsoft one at that point? Nevertheless, you could still download your game and remove the thin DRM layer (tools available to do so), and then play them on your Windows<10 machines.

Dalewyn 3y ago
Valve problem. Selling merchandise you know/stated the customer can't use is negligent at best, malicious at worst. Obligatory IANAL.
- slowhadoken 3y ago
  Seems like the obligation falls on developers and studios. It’s Capcom’s responsibility to keep Street Fighter X Tekken working because Capcom is the seller. Fortunately the community usually warns buyers about abandonware and you can always get a refund.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    Also if you're playing on Linux a lot of those older games run perfectly through WINE, better than they run on modern Windows.
    - slowhadoken 3y ago
      wine is rolled into proton.
      - ripdog 3y ago
        Please excuse me while I become 'that guy', but Proton is a distribution of Wine with a bunch of patches and extra components like DXVK. The vast majority of proton is unmodified wine.
        slowhadoken 3y ago

prmoustache 3y ago

> Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. Why wouldn't they work well? Every time backward compatibility is mentionned, Microsoft Windows is praised as the best example of it and people brag they can still run everything they used to run in 1995.

superjan 3y ago
Well, there is overhead in testing additional windows versions, the libraries you use may use only deprecated SSL versions, and one needs to be careful not to connect them to the public internet because of unpatched security issues. And it does not allow the use of new platform features… iOS is worse: you can’t roll back iOS updates, so you need to keep one piece of hardware around for each version you test.
Kwpolska 3y ago
Microsoft has great backwards compatibility, but it isn't perfect. Those games might be coded to 1990s standards, e.g. using old graphics APIs that don't support modern GPUs.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Which ones? Apart from DOS games and windows 3.x which I would treat separatly the only graphics api I could think of was Glide for which there are modern wrappers like nglide.
  - indigo945 3y ago
    Parts of DX5 and previous, such as the "retained mode", are missing from current versions of Windows entirely. Much of the remaining implementation is buggy and introduces render artifacts. Open source projects such as dgVoodoo offer a solution to run old games, by re-implementing old DirectX and Glide on top of current DirectX [1], similar to how Wine runs DX games on Linux on top of OpenGL or Vulkan. [1]: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2 https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2