Valve's Steam client is pretty widely compatible with all kinds of newer and older operating systems—that's what you do when you want as many people as possible spending their money in your store. But nothing lasts forever, and Valve does eventually end support for old software when it's time to move on. The company announced in a support note today that it would be ending Steam client support for 32-bit versions of Windows on January 1, 2026.
"Existing Steam Client installations will continue to function for the near term on Windows 10 32-bit but will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates," the support note reads. "Steam Support will be unable to offer users 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."
When Steam drops support for an older operating system, it's often because support is also being ended in some other underlying piece of technology that Steam uses to function, like its Chromium-based built-in browser. Valve cited "system drivers and other libraries that are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows" as the reason for ending 32-bit Windows support.
