Fortnite Just Dropped Support For A Ton Of Players
Fortnite will no longer support Windows 7 or 8.
Fortnite’s most recent update brings many changes to the game, and one of them is the loss of support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems. This isn’t all that surprising, Microsoft ended the official support for both operating systems in January 2020, and Epic Games announced the loss of support in December last year, which now forces players to either upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows 11.
According to IGN, the news about the loss of support for one of the best Windows products (we’re referring to Windows 7) was shared by Epic Games itself over Twitter. The statement reads that the battle royale will no longer support PCs running Windows 7, Windows 8, and other legacy software. Epic decided on this move following an issue that popped up last December for Windows 7 users, which weren’t able to launch and play the game on their Windows 7 machines. For many, this prompts the question of why anyone would consider gaming on an older version of Windows.
Well, there were initially many benefits of playing Fortnite on Windows 7. Similar to the recent release of Windows 11, which had its share of bugs and quirks at launch, Windows 10 wasn’t the most stable operating system when it launched in 2015. There weren’t any major issues with the OS, but a lack of optimization caused slight performance issues for the game, which is why competitive gamers opted to use Windows 7 instead. Windows 7, which at the time had already spent six years on the market, was incredibly stable and hailed as one of the best OSs Microsoft ever made.
Fortnite dropped in 2017, at which point many PC users were still using Windows 7. However, Windows 10 had massive support, and Microsoft regularly updated the system over the years until it superseded Windows 7 as the best Windows ever made. Still, gamers were resisting the change, despite the fact that the newer OS was now even more optimized and better for gaming than Windows 7. And while the development and support for Windows 7 had stopped, the development of Fortnite hasn’t.
The battle royale game changed a lot since its initial release, and each subsequent release brought further incompatibilities with Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems. So much so that gamers playing on Windows 7 and 8 couldn’t log into the game for approximately a week due to unexplained errors. This poses an issue for the game’s development team, as its resources are drawn towards fixing the game for a legacy OS instead of actually developing Fortnite for the current software—it simply takes away from the development.
Hence, Fortnite maker decided to pull the official support away from the legacy systems, prompting many to switch to Windows 10 or even newer Windows 11 OS. Those unable to upgrade to said OSs can find the game on NVIDIA GeForce Now and still continue playing on their Windows 7 or Windows 8 PCs in a manner that’s officially supported by Epic Games. The actual number of Fortnite players affected by this change is unknown, but considering that only approx. 10 percent of desktops use Windows 7, and approx. 0.7 percent used Windows 8; those numbers can’t be high.
