Valve has revealed that Steam will stop supporting rigs that are running 32-bit versions of Windows. Windows 10 64-bit and Windows 11 will continue be supported, but the move shouldn’t impact a significant amount of Steam users.
Despite advancements in technology, there are plenty of modern releases that are playable on Windows 7 32-bit. In fact, there’s a community dedicated to 32-bit gamers on Steam, where new and discounted games that can be run on a 32-bit system are listed. Examples include the likes of Dead Cells, Pikuniku, and GRIS, all of which have “overwhelmingly positive” reviews.
In an announcement on Steam, Valve said, “as of January 1, 2026 Steam will stop supporting systems running 32-bit versions of Windows.” Windows 10 64-bit will still be supported and 32-bit games will still run.
If you are part of the 0.01% of players that Valve says still use 32-bit version, reported through the Steam Hardware Survey, existing Steam Client installations will continue to function for the near term on Windows 10 32-bit. However, they will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates from January 1, 2026 and beyond.
Steam Support will phase out technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions. According to Valve, the move has been made because “core features in Steam rely on system drivers and other libraries that are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows. Future versions of Steam will run on 64-bit versions of Windows only.”
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