Playing Fortnite on Windows 7? We've got some bad news for you

Fortnite fans hanging on for dear life to outdated versions of Windows, be warned - you'll no longer be able to play the game on anything older than Windows 10.

Epic Games made this change for Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2, which kicks off today, although the developer had already told us that this would happen at the tail end of last year.

Both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are officially not supported now, and Epic suggests that users of those operating systems take a different tack to enjoy Fortnite on their PCs - namely streaming.

Specifically, Epic recommends taking to GeForce Now for Fortnite sessions if you have a Windows 7 or 8 PC. NVIDIA's game streaming service will, of course, only run as well as your internet connection (as with all streaming offerings).

Never mind Fortnite support, the obvious problem with still using Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 is that they aren't supported by Microsoft any longer, with the latter OS having run out of road for support in January 2023.

Anybody still using these old versions of Windows will no longer get security patches, and could therefore be vulnerable to exploits when online. For that reason, it's a sensible idea to upgrade to Windows 10 anyway. (Or maybe Windows 11, although older PCs likely won't be compatible with Microsoft's newest operating system).

Believe it or not, there are still quite a number of people using Windows 7, which is well past its sell-by-date (three years over, in fact). That said, we've recently seen figures from Statcounter (an analytics firm) showing that Windows 7 users are now making the leap to Windows 10 in much bigger numbers (with Windows 7's userbase almost halving, going by the stats for February 2023).

This latest development with Fortnite might just help drive a few more Windows 7 diehards to upgrade their operating system. (That seems more likely than turning to GeForce Now, anyway, but you never know).