If you are someone who is still primarily on a Windows XP or Windows Vista PC (… in 2018, for whatever reason), you might want to upgrade your OS by the year’s end, especially if you have a substantial library of Steam games.

Valve has announced that it will be dropping support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in 2019- which not only means that the client will no longer support those operating systems, but also that your Steam games will not be playable on them at all. Which is kind of a shame, since many games only work well on Windows XP.

The reason Valve cites for this move is newer features in Steam relying on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which in turn also does not support anything lower than Windows 7.

Now, I get the distaste of locking people out of their libraries unless their operating systems are upgraded (especially since game preservation and continuity are often cited as benefits of PC gaming), but on the other hand- seriously. If you’re still on Windows XP or Vista, please upgrade. They’re super old, and super susceptible to virus attacks and security exploits.

A chart from the latter compares the uptake of Windows 8 versus Windows 7 and Vista (the OS people loathed before Win8). Net Applications monitors operating system usage by looking at the OS version of users who access around 40,000 sites it monitors for its clients.

Within the same amount of time, Windows 8 usage uptake has somehow slipped behind Vista in the same point in its release. Windows 8 online usage share is around 1.6 percent of all Windows PCs, whereas Vista had a 2.2 percent share in the same period two months after release.

While it doesn’t spell the end of the OS, it must be more than a little worrying for Microsoft when your most-loathed OS in history did better than your so-called revolutionary one.

(Special thanks to Reddit)