Your cuddly dinosaur aunties at Capcom have warned that they can’t “guarantee” various Monster Hunter games will run on Windows 10 PCs after uncle Microsoft end support for the operating system on October 14th this year.
When that fateful day comes to pass, Capcom “will no longer guarantee that Monster Hunter: World, Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Wilds will run on Windows 10 systems.” Which isn’t to say that these games will immediately become unplayable, but “future system updates or game title updates may make the game incompatible on Windows 10 systems”.
The developers add that if you have trouble with those Monster Hunter games on Windows 10 PCs after October 14th, “support can only be provided based on information from before support for Windows 10 was discontinued”, as they’ll be discontinuing services for investigating problems when playing on Windows 10.
If this is the first you’ve heard of Windows 10 being sunsetted/given the old heave-ho/left crying by the roadside, Microsoft have said that Windows 10 apps and drivers will continue to boot and run normally after the cessation of official support, but you won’t get any more free security updates, bug fixes and big feature updates.
It’s not quite as cut-and-dried as that in practice. Microsoft 365 apps running on personal and commercial Windows 10 PCs will get security updates until October 10th 2028, and feature updates until August 2026.
Microsoft are also offering a paid extended security update subscription for people who want to maintain Windows 10 beyond the cut-off date, with availability dependent on region and which version of the OS you’re running. In good news for people resident in the European Economic Area, Microsoft have bowed to pressure from consumer protection organisation Euroconsumers (via Particle Collider Gamer) by making ESU updates free in the EEA until October 2026.
Windows10mageddon threatens to leave a lot of PC users in the lurch, though there’s a certain amount of Y2K-style hysteria about the fallout. According to one study, around half of Windows PCs still don’t run Windows 11. If your machine doesn’t have the specs for Windows 11, it seems like you’ll need to buy a fresh one. I expect there will be plenty more bulletins from game publishers encouraging players to update their systems.
This article has been updated to mention Microsoft’s recent decision to make ESU updates free to people in the EEA until October 2026.