Blizzard to Stop Supporting Windows XP and Vista

Say what you want about Blizzard (and I have, repeatedly and without restraint), but they tend to bend over backwards to make sure their games remain accessible to their audience, updating the older ones while keeping the newer ones functional on some of the older operating systems that are still out and about in the real world. Unfortunately, all things must come to an end, and anyone who still runs any of Blizzard’s recent titles on one of Microsoft’s extremely outdated operating systems - namely, Windows XP or Vista - is going to be in for an unhappy surprise pretty soon.

“Starting later this year, we will begin the process of ending support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Microsoft ceased mainstream support for these versions of Windows in 2009 and 2012, respectively, but since a decent portion of our audience was still using them at the time, we continued supporting them. However, there have been three major Windows releases since Vista, and at this point, the vast majority of our audience has upgraded to one of the newer versions.”

It's not surprising that Blizzard is doing this: heck, I’d argue it’s surprising it took them this long to get around to it, or that they even made Diablo 3 to be compatible with Windows XP. Still, if there are players still playing based on those operating systems, they’d better get a move on upgrading: fortunately, Windows 7 or 8 are pretty cheap these days, and frankly staying on Windows XP or Vista is just straight-up a security risk at this point, so… consider this motivation to finally get on their butts and upgrading to something safer.

Blizzard said they’ll keep everyone posted as each game is un-supported, so I’d suggest you pay attention if you’re one of the affected players.