why did valve chose to keep supporting 7/8/8.1?

[Jaguarek62]

I really didn't expect that valve would "upgrade" their chromium from 85 to 109 just to keep supporting 7 and 8 despite their official claims. I'm not complaining, but why bother with the announcement that they won't support them?

latest beta branches are working under 8.1 and they keep getting updates.

[D.Draker]

Looks more like the real reason to choose 109 is simply because it's lighter on system resources, not that they actually care about Win8, just my opinion.

[D.Draker]

I'm seeing it as a pattern, 85 was very light and fast, 86 a bit heavier, then a long row of heavy versions followed, starting from 108 it got better again.

As of now, I only see some improvement in 122. But it's too new for valve.

[mina7601]

13 hours ago, Jaguarek62 said:

I really didn't expect that valve would "upgrade" their chromium from 85 to 109 just to keep supporting 7 and 8 despite their official claims. I'm not complaining, but why bother with the announcement that they won't support them?

latest beta branches are working under 8.1 and they keep getting updates.

It is working under 7 as well, and I am able to play my favorite game in it, lol 

Actually, it's great that it's still working, I find that awesome rather than ridiculous. Maybe they are planning to do it at a different date and not January 1, who knows.

But, good question nonetheless and I've been wondering the same as well.

[Tripredacus]

Are they really supporting Windows 7 or are they just indifferent to it? When they dropped XP, I seem to recall they put actual blocks in the client to prevent it from running. I expected the same to happen this time around. Rather it sounds like they are just saying they stop supporting it (officially) but don't go about actually preventing it from running. Kind of like when Overwolf (Curse Mincraft launcher) dropped support of Win7 but it still worked if you tried to run it.

[UCyborg]

2 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

or are they just indifferent to it?

100% this IMO. I don't think switch to Chromium 109 is saying much, it seems more like a convenient stopgap to me. For all we know, they might already have a newer one in their development branch.

I've read some time ago they had (still have?) the kind of relaxed "work on what you want kind of culture" there. Maybe there's just nobody at the company that likes toying with old OSes? Or there are policies in place that say they can't seriously officially release legacy client (as how would that look?). I don't know, just my thoughts.

Edited March 4, 2024 by UCyborg