You've gotta be kidding me! I just wonder if that means it won't be possible to run or just that there will be no support? Win10&11 are total trash and that is prime example of planned obsolescence. They should then allow me to run the games I have there without Steam.

in the case of Steam it means it will stop working yes i.e, the app will have to be hacked in order to keep your games on those systems + also of course there will be no support for anyone that actually hacks the Steam app and the only reason Steam gets away with waiting that long is because they are big enough to make a deal with

That's bad! Thanks for the answer. I need to think what to do about it. GOG will be stpid not to use it to its advantage, showing how "rental" services that Steam actually represents are cancer.

Is that an advantage that they could benefit from though? This is against of what they used to stand for (old games on contemporary hardware) and the market is miniscule, so I really don't think so...

When it comes to Windows 7, the history repeats itself again now: it was the same when people were abandoning Windows XP: few cries from hardcore users ("I will NEVER use Windows 7, it sucks!1!"), but everyone else moved on. No reason for things being different now...

In a way yes, but Windows 7 is not much different from the newer systems minus its annoying features and spyware interwoven with the services you cannot block. I do not like its management options and I have to stess that Windows 7 in this area is not perfect either - Windows XP was still better in this area.

Another difference is that the gaming market is different now, and the loss more significant. Back then if you bought boxed games, you would have them on your CDs/DVDs. Now you buy a box and you stil have to tie it to Steam and more often than not it doesn't even have the installer. My Steam library back the was maybe 3-4 games.

People should realize that it is a taste of the subscription market they WILL push in the coming years. Now it is about being focrced to buy a new OS and very often new hardware, when you do not need it (newer hardware is also more prone to break down sooner than later). In the future it will be about osing access unless you continue payoing your fee. It's moving goalposts.

Having said that, I'm fine with them disabling the forced updates and me losing access to the store and forums through Steam. I just want access to my games produced for olders OSs anyway.

You see, most people just want to use their computers for what they were created for - and that's not for conspiracy theories. It's OK to wear a tin foil hat at home if you feel like it, but that doesn't mean that everyone should follow.

Tellemetry data sent by Windows has no ties to you as a person. If it did, governments would have been on it years ago. If you don't trust governments and big evil corporations, your only choice is an open source OS - if you're willing to go through the sources to make sure that they're not watching you.

Anyway, when it comes to "not much different" - I think you might have missed the last 10 years or so of software development. Neither Windows nor Linux kernels are standing still here. People of Windows XP era cried that Windows 7 was using all of their computer memory; a person familiar with technology was saying "ah, finally an OS that could use all of my hardware!" (which BTW Linux was already very good at at the time)

I agree fully with you there, that's why I still use GOG for its offline installers if I can. But you have to see that this is not really important for most people now; games are the same kind of entertainment as other arts - a cinema ticket costs the same as an AAA game and the expectations seem to be similar - a movie is a 2h of pleasure-and-forget, a game is longer, but still, not many people are interested in replaying games. Play-and-forget.

Yes, Amiga rulez. But let's not be blindsighted.

You've made some assumptions there in the first one. Hold your horses sometimes. Patronizing others will not help you win many friends out there, especially if you base your comments on far-fetched interpretations. I am well aware of all of those processes & the real reason for most of those changes is planned obsolescence. You assume all games are film-like experiences and do not offer anything else. That is totally untrue unless you limit yourself to interactive-story and virtual novel experience games. People have been playing original Starcraft for several decades now; same goes for Counter Strike. Puzzle games are not a rarity either.

will people still want to play CS or SC once W12 kills the mods... will it even run [forget lan]?

Yes, sorry for that, but sometimes it's just annoying. I'm willing to bet that most of people sticking with Windows 7 have no clue what they are doing; and like I said in my previous post: if they are connected to the internet, they are a threat not just to themselves but to everyone else.

Of course it is. Would you rather that Microsoft, Google and Apple (just mentioning the big three) stuck forever to one product that they developed at some point in the past? Every single application should be written with obsolescence in mind, because the alternative is stagnation and obscurity.

Not all of course, but the mainstream is and that's exactly what I was referring to ("most people"). Like I mentioned, some like to keep their games, me included. But it was you who said that the gaming market is different now - and indeed it is. And the change came with Steam, where you loan games instead of owning them...

Windows XP - 32 Bit operation almost exclusively.
Windows 7 - 64 Bit Operation. Great Looking Interface, can be made to look like Win 98 if you wanted to, somewhat good level of control over your system. Completely patched, no hole left open. Most Secure.
Windows 10 - 64 Bit Operation. Less control in the hands of the system owner and butt ugly interface. All holes open and running services will keep them that way.

EA is ahead of Steam, steal titles and rent them to other users, literally.
Unable to even Install my games under E.A. much less play them.
And I am on Windows 8.1 now (undesired but not touching 10).

For short, nothing past Windows 7 has made any kind of leap in technology, nor has Hardware made any demands for the improvement of the OS, to DATE. All you have is CORPORATE GREED.

yeeaahh... no, this is a bold faced lie.. xD

your post neither makes any sense nor does it relate to your original post.
btw, windows 7 not receiving any more security updates doesnt mean there arent any security holes anymore, lol

There aren't, and BTW, most virii types have already been found, chances a private user will encounter a new one is 1 in billions already. Meaning any AV software can catch a newer type of "worm" because it works the same way, so a change in names means nothing.

Exactly.
I don't understand companies like Epic and GOG.

Of course the problem with the clients is that they copied what Valve is doing.
Valve literally embeds an outdated version of Google Chromium into their DRM client.
And GOG as well as Epic do the same.

Yes, they literally put a web browser inside their client, which is ridiculous and shouldn't be done at all. It's also a security risk.

And Google stops supporting Windows 7, and therefore Valve goes "we can't do anything about that", which is of course a lie, because they could stop with that nonsense and simply create a light weight client in the first place, which simply keeps running on older Operating Systems.
And they could also offer direct downloads for DRM free games, like GOG. Of course they don't do that, because they are about lock-in. That's also why they don't even offer you a way to filter out games using DRM in their store.

At least GOG has standalone installers and offers direct downloads via web browser, something Valve as well as Epic don't, and thus it's not really a problem.

For both companies a proper light weight client would be a better solution. And they could then go "haha, stupid Valve".

I mean in case of Valve you are forced to "upgrade", otherwise you WILL lose access to all your games, which shouldn't be legal at all. And again: from a technological perspective none of this has to happen.

Tomb Raider 2 for example does not seem to run on Windows 10, but even if it did, there is no reason to lock you out.

What kind of security holes?
You understand that almost all access to internet is done via web browser, and you should not use Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge anyway. You should also not use Google Chrome, and also not Firefox.

You also shouldn't open attachments sent to you via e-mail.

So if you keep your proper web browser up-to-date and better: even block JavaScript, ads and other garbage, you will be way more secure than the average user on Windows 10 or 11 will ever be.

But in the end of course no one is secure, you always have to assume that your computer or smartphone got hacked. That's simply reality. There is no way to make sure that a computer connected to internet is actually secure and wasn't compromised already. Agencies like NSA make sure that there are always security holes in software, including Linux.

Anyway the point here is that Steam/Valve LOCK YOU OUT. GOG can't do that, which is great. This here is primarily about non-online games, that won't play on Steam anymore, but will keep playing when purchased via GOG.

And Epic should do the same. It would make Valve look like the criminals they are.