If a developer uses a particular version of a standard library, the matching redistributable version needs to be installed on the system to ensure that the program runs on the Windows PC. The main reason why you may see so many versions of the same year listed on your PC is that Microsoft never released a unified redistributable for a given year.

Eleven different versions of Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable exist for instance, and they may all be installed next to each other. Multiple builds may exist for any main version of Visual C++.While 32-bit Windows users will only see 32-bit versions of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable version, you may see both installed on 64-bit versions of the operating system. 32-bit and 64-bit versions are made available.There are a couple of reasons why you see this many of them installed on your computer:

Windows may ship with some Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable installations already, but most are installed when you install programs that require them on the system.

Visual c redistributable 2015