(Image credit: Future)
While Steam may no longer support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, the passionate community keeps gaming thriving on older PCs. Eazy Black (via The Bob Pony) has managed to unofficially bring the latest Steam Client Beta (December 4, 2025 build) to these beloved, unsupported systems.
The backport works best on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 8.x. You’ll need to have your operating system up to date for the backports to work correctly. But if you prefer to limit Windows updates, The B…
(Image credit: Future)
While Steam may no longer support Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, the passionate community keeps gaming thriving on older PCs. Eazy Black (via The Bob Pony) has managed to unofficially bring the latest Steam Client Beta (December 4, 2025 build) to these beloved, unsupported systems.
The backport works best on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 8.x. You’ll need to have your operating system up to date for the backports to work correctly. But if you prefer to limit Windows updates, The Bob Pony suggests installing at least KB976932, KB2999226, and KB3080149 or KB4474419 to help keep things running smoothly.
Steam Beta client (December 4th, 2025 build) has been unofficially backported to work on Windows 7 SP1 x64 and Windows 8.x x64, thanks to EAZY BLACK!⚠️ MUST FULLY UPDATE WINDOWS!Download for Windows 7: https://t.co/nG292FnaXjDownload for Windows 8.x: https://t.co/eklYmfR3sg pic.twitter.com/VVqcKyikz7December 9, 2025
While Windows 7 has been a fantastic operating system, progress marches on. You’ll notice that Windows 7 gamers on Steam are now quite rare, with only 0.05% according to the latest hardware survey. This operating system is nearing the end of its journey, so there’s not much anyone can do about it.
Meanwhile, Windows 11, which has received much criticism, continues to gain popularity and now holds a 69.2% share. Since Microsoft recently ended support for Windows 10, many gamers are bitterly switching over to Windows 11. Currently, only 30.66% of Steam users still use Windows 10, which is a 2.17% decrease from last month. That’s the last of the gamers who are still holding out on upgrading.
PC gaming boasts a wonderful community, full of passionate enthusiasts who keep Steam gaming alive for legacy Windows systems. As Steam continues to update its client regularly, it might only be a matter of time before we see fewer backports, or perhaps a day will come when Steam makes it impossible to backport anything at all. Many of these enthusiasts are balancing real lives, and their efforts to create these backports are truly acts of love.
FollowTom’s Hardware on Google News, oradd us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.