Valve's monthly survey reveals that almost 45% of Steam users on PC are still using Windows 10 even with the sword of Damocles hanging over them

pcgamer.com:

You won't hear any lectures from me, as I know how hard it is to let go of tech that's served you well. My last gaming laptop lasted me 10 years before the recovery partition on the hard drive finally said 'no more!' True, it had been ailing for some time before then, repeatedly switching off mid-match in League of Legends—though maybe my elderly gaming laptop was just trying to do me a favour on that one.

Still, there's few excuses for hanging on to an OS that's about to be ousted. Steam's monthly hardware and software survey has revealed that as of January 2025 44.41% of PC users are still using Windows 10, an OS that will lose support this October. But rather than simply being overly attached to an almost decade old OS, there's more to this story.

Just for a start, taking a peek at the Wayback Machine shows these numbers for January 2025 looked noticeably different earlier this month. While the same portion of players using Windows 10 sat at 42.87%, the earlier version of the January survey also reported that usage of Steam in all bar two languages was down. The fact this decrease was not matched by increases in other represented languages stood out, but what really got our attention was the survey's claim that usage of every listed video card was also down.

This suggests something was definitely off about the data, and has since been corrected. That still leaves us pondering why so many Steam users find themselves in a predicament with Windows 10, and it's highly unlikely to be as simple as 'laziness'—the reason behind any statistic seldom is.

Debuting in 2021, Windows 11 is surprisingly demanding as far as system requirements go. When it comes to older, but still perfectly serviceable hardware, it's totally understandable why many would prefer to hold out rather than upgrade their PC just so Windows 11 has a cushier pad to land on. That said, installing Windows 11 on technically unsupported hardware is fairly easy these days thanks to free tools like Rufus and