So you have 2 PCs instead of one and one is still online & running a modern OS to get the games in the 1st place to then copy to an old offline PC? Yeah that sounds real practical & totally worth it.

That is correct.

Hey, some of us really enjoy Win7 and/or got so used to the old OS that they absolutely dread trying anything new!

*shrug* Microsfot dropped W7 support January 2020. I think it is fair enough for Steam to keep their support going for 4 more years that the actually OS is supported for.

Steam got really mad that GOG beat them to the punch at dropping XP support, so they are now trying to drop Windows 7 support before history repeats.

Microsoft aims to drop W10 support in 2025, if Steam keeps the same year tange, then they will drop W10 support in 2029

Playing games they can't get on PC without it.

If Steam didn't exist, we might have something better. They were definitely better before Steam.

Microsoft "properly" dropped support for W7 only recently in Jan 2023 (after 3x years of Extended Support Updates). That's why Google dropped Chrome W7 support same month, and why it directly affects Steam & Galaxy (that are a glorified Chrome browser at their core). And MS have already announced W10 Enterprise LTSC IoT 21H2 10x year End of Support date is 13th Jan 2032 to which browsers like Chrome, etc, will obviously need to work. So it's an amusing possibility that some W10 versions will still be receiving security updates in 2031 long after the W11 train wreck is retired for W12 (same way W7 ESU outlasted W8 and even most of the earlier W10 2015-2020 builds).

Only real question for GOG is what will they do if MS goes in the wrong direction. If the recently introduced W11 feature Smart App Control (that "uses AI and Microsoft's cloud knowledge base to check every app that runs, blocking anything unsigned, unfamiliar, or known to be malicious. There is no whitelist, so blocked apps will only get through if their developers sign them") becomes compulsory, essentially acting like a giant killswitch that blocks all old games, patches and mods from running, then all of a sudden "we only support old games on the newest Windows OS" is definitely going to need to be a bit more flexible...

Sigh, no before Steam we had a tiny fraction of the games we have today. Consoles had most of the great games. When I was younger it would have been a ridiculous fantasy to think Tekken, would ever be on PC. It would have been unthinkable for a new Street Fighter to be on PC launch day and if it did come out it would be a bad port from someone other than Capcom years later. After Steam was successful the floodgates opened and developers who were console only finally were willing to let their games be released for PC. I don't like the DRM, but we wouldn't have all the games on PC we do now without it.

We had a tiny fraction of the game we have today because it was almost 20 years ago. People that used to make fun of you for playing videogames now play videogames.

Nope. It was Steam. There were plenty of great games on console 20 years ago, they just never came to PC.
And if Valve had not done it Microsoft would have. Of the two, I prefer Valve.

Anyway you asked why people still use Steam and I told you. If I wanna have a PC version of Persona 5 Royal, or Elden Ring or Red Dead 2 I need Steam.

As for the first quoted statement: more likely the reason is that Valve doesn't want to get sued for many millions of dollars for facilitating the use of unsecured OS'es, which is exactly what would happen if they did what that statement is asking for.

As for the second statement: as if GOG is going support Windows 7 forever. I'm sure it won't. And even if it did, that would still be a moot point, because pretty soon hardware manufacturers are going to stop supporting Windows 7 too, therefore users won't be able to use it forever for that reason either, as eventually their old hardware will breakdown and need to be upgraded to new hardware which won't work with Windows 7.

Bottom line is that there is no possible way for users to cling to Windows 7 forever, unless they are going to endlessly re-buy old & used hardware for the rest of their lives every time one of their old machines breaks down. And even then, users are not going to be able to play new games on those machines, so they are going to be mostly useless for that reason, other than for the niche purpose of playing ancient games only.

They didn't get released for PC because consoles were cheaper and they knew nobody would buy console versions if they could have a PC version that's better. Consoles made it easier for people to afford games. What does Steam have to do with the consoles, anyway? How many console games were available on Steam when it went up? Sure, Steam made it easier to get published but look at how much shovelware there is on it. Some of the things there aren't even games.