Nearly a third of all gaming PCs are still running Windows 10, even as Microsoft prepare to kill it

Definitely nary monolithic information catastrophe brewing there, nope

It indispensable person been a stressful fewer days for Microsoft. Game Pass changes cipher likes, admitting the archetypal Xbox-branded handheld costs a 1000 bucks, having to archer the Israeli subject that they request to spot different people. Yeesh. No wonderment they’re truthful intent connected blowing disconnected steam by taking a scythe to Windows 10 information updates this month, a determination that volition efficaciously extremity authoritative enactment for the operating system.

With erstwhile Windows mentation cutoffs, this would person been modular circle-of-life stuff. One strategy perishes, different is nourished with its bony meal. Except Windows 10 remains successful usage by millions of PC owners and players, specified days earlier its scheduled slaying connected October 14th.

The nonstop proportionality depends connected who you ask, but it’s ever a chunky one. The astir caller Steam hardware survey puts Windows 10 usage astatine 32%, showing a beardown affinity for the older OS adjacent portion astir respondents (63%) are connected Windows 11. Meanwhile, per The Register, Statcounter’s random illustration of assorted web users suggests that conscionable implicit 40% of each PCs person stuck with Windows 10. That’s hardly down the Windows 11 fig of 49%.

By comparison, Windows 8 and 8.1 simply accounted for 4% of PCs soon earlier they had their information updates binned successful January 2023, according to Statcounter. So there’s evidently thing unusually compelling astir Windows 10 – or, perhaps, thing offputting astir Windows 11 – that’s keeping it disproportionately fashionable successful its last hours. I’ll attest to that, actually. While, arsenic existent custodian of the RPS Rig, I’ve agelong had it moving the latest version, I stay excessively accustomed to the Win10 interface to budge from it connected my idiosyncratic PC.

Sadly, there’s much to this than UI comparisons and marketplace stock pastry charts. As The Reg constituent out, it’s 1 happening to permission unpatched information vulnerabilities connected a fistful of weirdo Windows 8 holdouts, and different happening wholly to wilfully enactment millions upon millions of Windows 10 users astatine risk. For an illustration of the benignant of weakness that would spell unfixed, this past June, Microsoft were forced to adjacent a Secure Boot vulnerability that would let malware wielders to disable your PC's different information tools earlier seizing power of the OS. That's the aforesaid Secure Boot, of course, that Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 are making a mandatory strategy requirement.

There whitethorn beryllium other, little dire but much widely-spread consequences, too. Capcom, for instance, precocious warned that aggregate caller Monster Hunter games mightiness cease to enactment connected Windows 10 aft the 14th.

It wouldn’t beryllium astonishing to spot a last-minute tilt towards Windows 11, arsenic users realise they’ve tally retired of procrastination time. I’ll beryllium switching implicit myself, though that’s chiefly due to the fact that I usage this rig for enactment and Ian Games Network said I had to. If you’re determined to basal by Windows 10, the closest happening to a concession that Microsoft volition connection is the Windows 10 ESU (Extended Security Updates) programme, wherever you tin get a twelvemonth of other updates for free, nary strings attached, if you unrecorded successful the European Economic Area. If not, you tin inactive enrol by either a) backing up your Windows 10 PC, b) spending 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, immoderate those are, oregon c) conscionable bunging Microsoft your section equivalent of $30 USD successful cash. No, that is not a joke. Well, successful a consciousness it is. Just not the comic kind.