In case you haven't heard, Valve Steam is going to void all clients running on Windows 7 and 8 before the end of the year. It doesn't matter how much money you spent on games, or how often you play, or whether you've been with Steam since the beginning—if you're like me and you never upgraded to Windows 10 for security and privacy reasons, Valve is taking your money and running.
Frankly, I don't see Windows 10 as being much of an "upgrade". Its myriad security holes and attack vectors are well-known and documented, and completely ignored by Microsoft. Everyone on HackerNews is pretty much in agreement that Microsoft is only dragging Windows along because there are a few thousand hard-line users who either can't or won't switch platforms; their only interest from Windows at this point is related to AI training and advertising revenue. The fact of Windows 11's constant need to be connected to the internet points to that. Microsoft and Google products are so inextricably intertwined at this stage, it's hard to tell where Google ends and Microsoft begins. And the American SEC doesn't bloody care; everyone in Washington, D.C., got to where they are with the generous financial support of huge corporations like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.
I got off on a bit of a rant just there, but it is for that very reason that Valve is discontinuing support for Windows 7 and 8. Windows 10 and 11 have Google ad integration, which is what Valve is counting on to make money following the Unity debacle in September. To be completely clear on this point; this sunset has absolutely nothing to do with zero-day forever or any other fancy security consultant verbiage you want to use—it is 100% about Valve wanting to take advantage of players with Win10 and 11's Google tools. No other reason. They're not concerned about security, they don't care about platform sustainability, they just want to do what every other corporate feudal outfit in America is doing right now and scan your computer for things they can use to profit from. I've talked about this before, I don't need to go over it again.
Back to the point. This is another in a litany of reasons why I hate launcher software. Software launchers. Whatever.
1. They take up space on your hard drive that could be used for other files.
2. They demand to be updated, locking you out of your software until you do.
3. Their only reason for being is so large corporations and spy agencies can monitor your computer.
4. They've destroyed the secondhand software market.
5. They can impose arbitrary restrictions on who is allowed to use their software. And now...
6. They facilitate artificial obsolescence.
Launcher software did not always exist. Maybe there was an EXE container to launch a DOS game on Windows, or a frontend to launch emulated games like D-Fend Reloaded, but the idea of a Valve Steam or EA Desktop style software launcher is a very new development in the whole of computing. Microsoft and Google refer to this kind of thing as "Software as a Service". Are you on Windows 10 right now? Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and have a look at the task manager right now. You see "WaaS" on there? That stands for "Windows as a Service". As in, something that Microsoft can pull the plug on at any time without prior warning. That's why I'll maintain this Windows 7 gaming computer of mine until the last possible moment; unlike 10 and 11, or even 8 to a certain extent; I actually own my computer. Microsoft isn't just leasing it to me on an extended basis. At some point, Windows 11 is going to become a subscription service, just like Microsoft Office, because why not? Microsoft wants to squeeze as much money as they possibly can out of the people who keep putting up with their shit. And, of course, the thing no one talks about is that Microsoft is only about 8 months away from ending support for Windows 10.
This is what Valve is trying to funnel you into. They know about the sunset on Windows 10 and they're going to force you into Windows 11 not long after that. So what happens? You think, "Ah, shit! My Cities Skylines!", and you real quick go out and buy a Windows 10 desktop to keep playing your Steam games. Then, 6 months later, Valve comes in and says, "You know what, fuck Windows 10, too. You need Windows 11 now." So now, you have to spend more money that you could otherwise be using to buy someone's album on itch.io to buy a new computer that's basically just a corporate feudal advertising machine, all for the privilege of playing this game that you bought legitimately back in 2019. Like I said before, we didn't always have launchers. What did we have?
We had physical media. Games came on DVD-ROM; and before that, CD-ROM; and before that, diskette; and before that, cassette tape. We only had to buy the software once, install it once, and it was good for the life of the machine. And, even this has been taken away from us! So, no, this isn't about obsolete technology or outdated operating systems—this is about corporate control. This is about how a group of shareholders can dictate how you use your software and for how long you have access to it. This is about billionaires telling you what you can do in your own home.
"Yeah, yeah, that's great; now how do we destroy software as a service?" With games, emulation. With regular software, free and open-source alternatives to paid software services. If Nintendo wants to charge you double for access to 30-year-old software, find an emulator for that console and the ROM of that software on the Internet Archive. If Electronic Arts wants to sell your data in exchange for access to game software you paid good money for, get a pirate copy from somewhere. If Microsoft's biennial data breaches are keeping you awake at night, switch to LibreOffice or OpenOffice. If Adobe wants to use your works-in-progress to train their AI algorithms, switch to GIMP. There are always options, but the corporate feudal state is counting on you to be too stupid to realise it. Well, you aren't stupid.
--17 November 2023--