Steam Ditches 32-Bit Support As Windows 10 Nears Its End

Valve has announced plans to end Steam support for systems running Windows 10 32-bit in the new year, so if you haven't upgraded to a 64-bit version of Windows 10 yet, now's the time.

In a new post on the Steam support page, the company said that come January 1, 2026, systems running Windows 10 32-bit will no longer be supported. 32-bit games will keep playing for now, and Steam clients that are already installed will continue functioning "for the near term," but they won't receive any updates after next year. This includes security updates or any technical support from Steam regarding old operating systems.

But maybe Windows 10 32-bit isn't that big of a deal to you. After all, according to a statistic Valve shared in the announcement, it's "only in use on 0.01 [percent] of systems reported through the Steam Hardware Survey." While Steam is a 32-bit app on Windows everywhere, that will change as the company said "future versions of Steam will run on 64-bit versions of Windows only."

The company ended with the encouragement that, because "core features in Steam" are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows, users should "update [operating systems] sooner rather than later."

This comes as support for Windows 10 (as well as 8.1 and 7) ends on October 14. Microsoft announced that, although these versions of the OS will continue working, they won't receive any more updates or technical support--similar to Steam's announcement--making them increasingly more vulnerable to cyber threats.