Valve has announced that it will be ending support for Steam on 32-bit versions of Windows. This shouldn't affect a lot of users.
Okay, I have to ask. What's with all the recent news about dropping support for 32-bit? Mozilla is ending support for Firefox 32-bit next year, LMDE 7 won't support 32-bit, and now Steam is discontinuing its desktop client for x86 too. All this happened in a matter of 10 days, give or take. The timing is funny, isn't it? It's like everyone turned around, spotted the 32-bit computers and cried "get them".
Anyway, as I mentioned in those articles, 32-bit took a back set nearly 2 decades ago, when Intel and AMD started producing 64-bit CPUs. The fact that the x86 has survived for so long, is commendable. So, if the total number of 32-bit computers are incredibly low, people who play games on these old machines would be even lower, right? Steam's Hardware Survey doesn't even mention the numbers for the OS, but Valve's announcement says that the number of users on Windows 10 32-bit is about 0.01%. That's not very surprising. Valve says that Windows 10 32-bit is the only 32-bit version of Windows that it still supports.
Windows 10 reaches its end-of-life next month, and it is the last iteration of Windows to support x86 architecture. Windows 11 is 64-bit only. That said, Steam's 64-bit client will continue to work on Windows 10 x64 PCs. 35.08% of Steam's Windows gamers are on Windows 10 64-bit. Windows 11 ranks first with a 60.39% share of users. Strangely enough, Windows 7 64-bit is holding on, with about 0.07% of Steam users (Windows) are still on the legacy OS. I suppose this might include extremely patient gamers, and the folks who refused to upgrade to Windows 10.
Steam will end support for Windows 32-bit on January 1, 2026. Existing installations of the Steam Client will continue to work, you can continue to use it to download and play games, including 32-bit games. But, here is the important thing, Steam will no longer provide any updates including new features or security updates for 32-bit Windows. Valve explained that core features in Steam rely on system drivers and other libraries that are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows. It is advising users to upgrade their computers to 64-bit as soon as possible.
The Steam client for desktop is based on Chromium
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