Rockstar Games have ended support for Windows 7 and 8 across their titles. The company announced this decision back in October 2023 but has come into effect as of Tuesday 30th January.
It was already compatible though.
Edit: nevermind. It’s because Windows stopped supporting those versions, and with no new security updates devs won’t support them either.
Usually that ends up with Devs saying “if you have issues on these platforms we will no longer support you in fixing them and it will get no more updates from us”. Sadly this is then going out of their way to stop people with old OSs from playing their games, even though they would still technically run.
Now if people want to use an old Os, for whatever reason, they will now have to pirate those games even if they do own them. And that itself is what would put those users to risk when using an old OS is they don’t know where and what to download safely.
Old platforms are not a viable platform worth supporting. That’s why they’re old. This is different from old hardware support, like where Linux supports older hardware really well. Linux still does not support old versions however.
But this is not a case of the games now unable to run, they specifically gated out old OSs from running a game they could otherwise run. They don’t need to support the games anymore for old platforms, and they could still run on them at the users discretion.
Sadly this is then going out of their way to stop people with old OSs from playing their games, even though they would still technically run.
There’s not necessarily any malicious intent. Some features require breaking backwards compatibility.
Supporting old platforms is bad for everyone, it locks out stuff and takes dev time. People need to learn to update their OS.
The old OSs don’t need to be able to run new updated versions of the game though so they didn’t have to fully gate out them running of the game on an old OS.
Also even though 7 and 8 currently don’t really have any nostalgia going for them, they eventually will. It’s nice that I can have a secondary PC with XP and Vista to play era-relevant games on to bring me back to when I used to use them myself as a kid.
It already annoys me theres a lot of XP games that are sadly locked behind Steam that I can no longer play on that machine. I could just play them on my normal gaming pc but when im on that I’d rather just be playing something else, if you get what i mean.
In these days of GAAS they won’t let you run old versions of their games because of $. They want you tied to their launcher, advertisements and whatnot.
There’s just no reason not to update your OS. Old devices run perfectly well on linux with its lower memory footprint. Running an old, unsupported OS and connecting to internet is asking for trouble.
The security issues of being connected to the internet on old OSs is wildly blown out of proportion if you just browse the internet safely and know exactly what you’re downloading or just download files on another note secure device/OS
I’m not arguing that someone should have their daily driver be an old OS. This is for playing games or using software on the era relevant OS. Think like playing an actual N64 vs emulating on a Switch.
There’s no such thing as using the internet safely.
Packets you send can be intercepted.
Websites you browse serve ads with malware.
You can be hacked.
All of these are made easier on outdated OSes.
New window versions try to be compatible with old versions. The older ones can’t become compatible with the newer ones
It was already compatible though.
Edit: nevermind. It’s because Windows stopped supporting those versions, and with no new security updates devs won’t support them either.
Usually that ends up with Devs saying “if you have issues on these platforms we will no longer support you in fixing them and it will get no more updates from us”. Sadly this is then going out of their way to stop people with old OSs from playing their games, even though they would still technically run.
Now if people want to use an old Os, for whatever reason, they will now have to pirate those games even if they do own them. And that itself is what would put those users to risk when using an old OS is they don’t know where and what to download safely.
Old platforms are not a viable platform worth supporting. That’s why they’re old. This is different from old hardware support, like where Linux supports older hardware really well. Linux still does not support old versions however.
But this is not a case of the games now unable to run, they specifically gated out old OSs from running a game they could otherwise run. They don’t need to support the games anymore for old platforms, and they could still run on them at the users discretion.
There’s not necessarily any malicious intent. Some features require breaking backwards compatibility.
Supporting old platforms is bad for everyone, it locks out stuff and takes dev time. People need to learn to update their OS.
The old OSs don’t need to be able to run new updated versions of the game though so they didn’t have to fully gate out them running of the game on an old OS.
Also even though 7 and 8 currently don’t really have any nostalgia going for them, they eventually will. It’s nice that I can have a secondary PC with XP and Vista to play era-relevant games on to bring me back to when I used to use them myself as a kid.
It already annoys me theres a lot of XP games that are sadly locked behind Steam that I can no longer play on that machine. I could just play them on my normal gaming pc but when im on that I’d rather just be playing something else, if you get what i mean.
In these days of GAAS they won’t let you run old versions of their games because of $. They want you tied to their launcher, advertisements and whatnot.
There’s just no reason not to update your OS. Old devices run perfectly well on linux with its lower memory footprint. Running an old, unsupported OS and connecting to internet is asking for trouble.
The security issues of being connected to the internet on old OSs is wildly blown out of proportion if you just browse the internet safely and know exactly what you’re downloading or just download files on another note secure device/OS
I’m not arguing that someone should have their daily driver be an old OS. This is for playing games or using software on the era relevant OS. Think like playing an actual N64 vs emulating on a Switch.
There’s no such thing as using the internet safely.
Packets you send can be intercepted.
Websites you browse serve ads with malware.
You can be hacked.
All of these are made easier on outdated OSes.
That is why you put that remark there and then start disregard breaking the games I’m those versions as an issue to be fixed.
If they continue to work, good for everyone. If they happen to break them at some point, tough luck, but not a problem.
Actively stopping the games from running is terrible and entirely unnecessary though.