Valve adds Secure Boot and TPM checks to Steam on Windows

In 2021, with the initial release of Windows 11, the average PC user got to learn two new terms: Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, and Secure Boot. These features became mandatory for those who want to run Windows 11 officially, but for everyone else, TPM and Secure Boot remained irrelevant. Fast forward to 2025, and Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot are grabbing people's attention once again, as some popular games now rely on these features for anti-cheat software.

Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot are low-level features that are usually managed outside the operating system. You cannot toggle them in Windows, so less tech-savvy users might not even know about their existence or how to turn them on. To make life easier for such users, Valve is adding TPM/Secure Boot checks to the Steam client.

The latest Steam beta release added a single Windows-related change. Now, users can go to Help > System Information and see whether Secure Boot and Trusted Platform Module are enabled. Here is the changelog:

• Added detecting if Secure Boot and a TPM are enabled on the current machine. This information is displayed under Help > System Information. It is now also collected when opting into the Steam Hardware Survey.

Unfortunately, Steam won't tell you how to enable Secure Boot and Trusted Platform Module on your system, so you are on your own on this one. Still, it is a welcome change that will make these two technologies more known among gamers who might not care whether their systems have some obscure security features. What they care about is why the latest Call of Duty is not launching, and the Steam client will help figure that out.

Speaking of Steam updates, Valve recently announced that support for 32-bit Windows 10 is ending on January 1, 2026. While the previous versions of the client will continue working for a while, Valve urges users to switch to 64-bit Windows installations to continue receiving updates and support from Valve.

Source

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Posted Friday 26 September 2025 at 4:05 am AEST (my time).

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