World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and more to drop support for older Windows versions

If you're still running Windows XP or Windows Vista, then here's unwelcome news: a handful of Blizzard games will no longer support those operating systems come October. The studio made the announcement today that World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm will cease to function with those systems by the end of the year.

"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," the announcement reads. "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 a matter of the games receiving no ongoing technical support for those operating systems – they'll simply cease to run. So if you're still using one of these, you'll need to update ASAP. "We’ll be rolling out this change on a staggered schedule, and will post further notices as we get closer to making the change for each game," the announcement said in closing.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.