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.

Looks like Microsoft’s aggressive moves to drive adoption of Windows 10 – including making their newest OS free to upgrade to, as well as some questionable methods to passively update people’s computers – have paid off, because less than a year after it launched, Windows 10 is now already being used by almost half of Steam’s massive userbase.

According to the latest statistics revealed by the company, almost 45% of all PC gamers are now using Windows 10- this makes it the most used OS on Valve’s service by any metric, and it also indicates that by and large, PC gamers are upgrading to Microsoft’s new offering en masse. Windows as a whole has 96% of all PC gamers, while the remaining 4% of them are divided between Mac OS X and Linux.

On the whole, this should be great news for Microsoft, especially since their own UWP, Windows Store, Xbox Anywhere, and PC gaming efforts are all tied intrinsically to Windows 10- more people on Windows 10 means more of a base to market these efforts to.

Here are the full system requirements;

Minimum:

– Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
– Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
– Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
– Memory: 2GB RAM
– DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10
– Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
– Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
– Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible sound card
– Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
– Input: Keyboard and mouse (Microsoft Xbox 360 controller optional)

Recommended:

– Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
– Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz or AMD Phenom X3 2.4GHz
– Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 Series with 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 5750 Series with 512MB or equivalent DX10 card with 512MB memory
– Memory: 3GB
– DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Vista SP1
– Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
– Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
– Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible Dolby Digital 5.1 sound card
– Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
– Input: Keyboard and mouse (Xbox 360 controller optional)

This is bad news for many, as a Steam survey conducted last month showed that 42% of Steam users still use XP.

We can also see here that the game will run on Dx10, apparently with no option for Dx9.

Just Cause 2 releases on the 23rd March for the 360, PS3 and PC.