If you’re a League of Legends player who’s been loyal to their old Windows operating system for the better part of the last decade, we’ve got some terrible news for you: It’s time to move on.
Riot Games announced today that League is ending its support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 in early 2024, meaning every player who’s been playing the game on these relatively dated operating systems will need to upgrade to a newer OS at some point before these changes go live in February.
In short, Riot believes there isn’t a strong enough number of players using older versions of Windows to continue supporting them.
“These updates are critical for allowing us to continue to improve the stability and performance of League,” Riot Games studio leader Andrei Van Roon said in a developer update posted earlier today. “While we want to ensure League is accessible as possible to as many players as possible, at some point, continuing to support legacy operating systems that very few players are still using heavily limits our ability to serve the vast majority of the player base.”
Windows 7 was originally released in July 2009, just a few months after the launch of League of Legends. Windows 8 followed a few years later in 2012. These operating systems were synonymous with the early days of League, but as PCs have evolved over the last decade, they’ve been left behind in favor of newer versions. With the developer’s new update, the game will be shedding a piece of its original history.
Come next year, the only Windows operating systems that will support League will be Windows 10 and 11.
League’s discontinuation of support for outdated Windows systems will go live in Patch 14.4, which is slated to be released shortly into the new year, in February.
