Somewhere Between A Third To A Half Of All PCs Using Steam Are Still Windows 10

Careful What Is In That Hat You Just Downloaded!

It is likely a bit of an exaggeration to say half of all computers that are used to run Steam games are still on Windows 10, but the count certainly seems to be around one in three.  There is a little less than two weeks to go before Microsoft stops serving up patches to most, but not all of the world, for free.  After Oct. 14th you will have to subscribe and pay a yearly fee to Microsoft to continue to receive patches and it seems unlikely a significant number of gamers will be aware of this option, let alone be willing to fork over cash to get patches.

This is will likely end in tears for a lot of gamers, casual or otherwise, as they represent a juicy target for nefarious online actors.  The popularity of hats, skins and other cosmetics in online games has already created a huge audience for scammers to target and the end of security patches for Windows 10 will only expand the ability of scammers to mess with people’s lives and finances.  There will also likely be a number of mods for popular games which will just happen to also take advantage of gaming computers that are out of date, and that’s before even considering the variety of game hacks available on the net.

As you might have heard suggested on this weeks PCPer Podcast, it seems likely that the only thing that will put an end to Windows 10 is the release of a new DirectX that only works on Win11 or whatever name Microsoft gives their next OS.