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Still running Windows 7 or 8? Prepare for an Epic fail – Epic Games Store follows Steam and drops support for older operating systems
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The Epic Games Store has followed in the footsteps of Steam in dropping support for Microsoft’s desktop operating systems which are older than Windows 10 – although this hasn’t happened quite yet.

Epic gave notice in an announcement that support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 (or 8.1) will cease from June 2024, so just over two months’ time. Note that Windows 10 32-bit will also be dropped, but not the 64-bit version of the OS that the vast majority of folks run. There's no 32-bit version of Windows 11, of course.

So, support from June will be limited to Windows 10 64-bit and Windows 11 – and for macOS, version 10.13 or newer of Apple’s OS.

As mentioned, Epic is a bit later than Valve in closing down support for these older operating systems, because Steam enacted this measure at the start of 2024. As you might expect, there weren’t many PC gamers that were affected, going by Valve’s stats – fewer than 1% of Steam users had Windows 7/8 installed at the time. And the same is likely true for the Epic Games Store.

Analysis: Time to upgrade?

For the small niche of gamers who will be hit by this move, this will obviously be somewhat disappointing. Mind you, when June rolls around, this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use the Epic Games Store at all. It’ll still work, it just won’t get any updates going forward, or be supported in any way. This means that after a while, bits of functionality might fail and the launcher will eventually probably start to misfire or stop working entirely.

Naturally, without updates, you’ll also be open to any vulnerabilities in Epic’s client, but then if you’re still running Windows 7 or 8, that’ll be the least of your worries – the exploits open to leverage in those systems will be far more worrying in nature, of course.

And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t be running Windows 7 or 8 any longer, anyway. It’s time to upgrade, one way or another – by which we mean make the move to Windows 10 (or Windows 11, if your PC spec is up to it), or take the obvious alternate route, a Linux distro (there are some solid Windows-like choices out there, after all).

What about Windows 10 32-bit users? Well, Microsoft does still support them, but there are very few of these folks out there now (certainly in the gaming world – Steam’s hardware survey doesn’t even list Windows 10 32-bit anymore, and hasn’t for a long time).

Via Neowin

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Steam gets a huge free update on PC, and it’s good news for Steam Deck too
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Valve has announced a major update to its Steam application that brings a “fresh” new look, better notifications, a new in-game overlay and new Notes feature.

Announced on Twitter (see below), and with a blog post, this is one of the biggest updates to Steam we’ve seen for a long time – and due to the popularity of Valve’s Steam platform, these changes will likely impact almost all PC gamers.

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The most noticeable change is the major redesign of the Steam interface, which Valve describes as “targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam.” While the app remains recognizable, the new look feels more modern, with Settings and Screenshot Manager getting particular attention.

Screenshots of the new Steam user interface

(Image credit: Valve)

Better notifications

If you use Steam – and if you play many of the best PC games it’s likely that you do, then you’ll probably have noticed notifications popping up in the corner of your screen while playing. While these can sometimes be useful, more often than not they're useless alerts about someone adding you to their ‘Friends list’, potentially distracting you at a key moment in the game.

So the fact that Valve has improved notifications to be “more useful to you” is certainly welcome – as is Valve’s acknowledgement that Steam notifications haven’t been great. With the new update, the 'bell' icon at the top of the screen will only light up green when there’s “truly something new for you,” and the notification pop-out window will be limited to new notifications (older ones can be viewed by clicking the 'View all' option).

Screenshots of the new Steam user interface

(Image credit: Valve)

Steam now also provides new notification settings that let you fine-tune which notifications pop up, and where they'll appear. Hopefully this will put a stop to immersion-breaking pop-ups showing up while you're playing games.

New and improved in-game overlay

The in-game overlay, which appears when you press Shift+Tab while playing a game, has got a new look as well, with a new toolbar along the bottom that contains buttons for things such as chat, achievements, guides and a web browser, so they can all be quickly accessed. It’s similar to the Game Bar in Windows 11 (which you can open by pressing the Windows key +G on your keyboard.

You can also customize which elements appear in the in-game overlay, and these settings will carry over regardless of which game you play.

You can now pin windows from the overlay to appear on-screen while you’re playing. This could be really handy for putting up guides to help you through a tricky part of a game, or – as Valve suggests – you could use it to multitask, such as playing a video or podcast while you game.

The in-game overlay also comes with two brand-new features. The first is the Game Overview panel, which gives you a load of easily-glanceable information about the game you're playing, including achievements, progress, news and more.

Screenshots of the new Steam user interface

(Image credit: Valve)

Valve has also added a new Notes feature, which allows you to type out quick notes and thoughts, or paste images, while playing. This could prove really helpful for keeping track of puzzles within a game, or for creating a ‘to-do’ list to ensure you get the most out of the game.

These notes are synced, so you can see them on any PC you use Steam on – and that includes the Steam Deck, which is a nice touch.

Steam Deck improvements

While the main focus of this update is on improving the PC experience of Steam, Valve has also done some background work on improving the user experience on its handheld console, the Steam Deck.

Code is now more commonly shared between the Steam desktop client, Big Picture mode and the Steam Deck, and Valve promises that this will mean that any changes and updates made to the desktop client will now appear on the Steam Deck more quickly.

It should work the other way around as well, and Valve has noted that the controller configurator feature of the Steam Deck, which is one of the best tools included with the handheld, can now also be used by the desktop version of Steam (via the in-game overlay), making it easier to configure gamepads connected to your PC.

Background work introducing hardware acceleration to Mac and Linux versions of Steam has also been included, so gamers on those platforms should get an experience that’s more in-line with the Windows version, which again is welcome.

So far the changes appear to have been warmly received by Steam users, and the update should be rolling out right now. For more info, check out Valve’s video highlighting the changes below:

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Windows 11 is more popular with gamers, but there’s bad news for Intel in Steam survey
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Windows 11 is gaining some decent momentum with gamers, at least going by the latest stats from Steam, although Intel has slipped slightly compared to last month’s Steam survey.

The hardware and software survey for January 2022 showed that Windows 11 is now used in 13.56% of the gaming rigs evaluated for this report, which is up quite strongly on December’s figure of 10.15%.

That’s good news for Microsoft, of course, but the survey produced somewhat disappointing results for Intel on the hardware front.

In December’s stats, Intel actually witnessed an increase in its processor market share among Steam gamers to the tune of 0.82%, with Team Blue securing 69.27% in total.

That looked significant given how dominant rival AMD Ryzen processors have been in recent times, stealing a lot of turf from Intel in the desktop PC world – but the upward movement has ebbed for Team Blue, as it dropped slightly to 69.02% in January 2022, albeit that only represents the loss of a quarter of a percentage point.

Analysis: Nothing too worrying for Intel, and serious momentum building for Microsoft

With the Intel figures, while the chip giant might be slightly disappointed that growth hasn’t continued – and that new Alder Lake CPUs aren’t sparking a continued upswing – it’s not a huge surprise.

This is only a very slight loss for Intel, after all, and in recent times, the figures for Team Blue have been rather up and down anyway (even before Alder Lake came out, we saw some decent upticks with Rocket Lake). Really, this is a pretty minimal downward dip, and could be put down to the typical margin of error that Valve’s survey is doubtless working with.

Windows 11’s progress is a more clearly defined growth spurt, and with an increase of 3.41% for January 2022, that’s almost double the gain Windows 11 witnessed from November to December (1.87%).

In short, there’s a clear suggestion that more and more gamers are making the move to Microsoft’s newest OS, despite the early bugs which we’ve written multiple reports about (mind you, some of these are now fixed up, and it’s not like Windows 10 doesn’t have bugs either).

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