Edit: An Alpha driver is now available: https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/RSAE-18.1.1-Alpha-Release-Notes.aspx

Please note this is an Alpha quality driver and should not be installed unless you suffer from the issues. It has been confirmed that this driver fixes "The Witcher: Enhanced Edition" for certain so far. It should fix other games too.

Please take some time to look at this even if you don't use an AMD GPU. This hurts us here at GOG, as we are fans of the classics. AMD have broken DirectX 9 with many older (e.g. The Witcher) and newer (e.g. StarCraft 2) games and do not care!

This is what AMD have to say about it:

https://community.amd.com/message/2839053#comment-2839053

"This title is from 2007, so we are unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue, which is most likely caused by outdated API modules."

This screws over ALL OF US at GOG. We need to let AMD know we wont stand for it.

I started a reddit thread to discuss the issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ncr3y/regarding_amd_and_the_lack_of_directx_9_support_a/

interesting, although being a amd cpu user mostly (amd k6, amd xp, intel c2d, amd phenom2, amd phenom2 x6 and now ryzen), i used so far only nvidia gfx as there was always some trouble with amd cards. nvidia cards are always more compatible and better optimized. i thought that this time was over by now and planned to get a new amd gfx, but now nvidia it will be again.

Indeed. Vega is already unnotable and yet they're causing trouble already. NVIDIA on the other hand is becoming a better value too, particularly on the mobile market. AMD can afford GPU problems but not for too long.

Wow, if that news is true, it's appalling!

I knew AMD was a shady company many months before Vega came to market when lots of evidence leaked that it would be a major flop despite the fact that they falsely advertised it as a Volta-killer.

I hope news like the statement in the OP helps them to go bankrupt faster.

Welp, going to get Nvidia when I build my next system thats for sure.

Yeah, not cool, but I seem to recall NVidia sometimes having similar issues, new drivers breaking compatibility with some older games. I recall something like this happened even pretty recently, like during the last two months?

In that sense I was positively surprised when Intel HD 4000 graphics drivers went the other way: new drivers fixed quite many old games and they ran perfectly on Intel HD, like Empire Earth, Gorky 17 and several others, even ones that have problems running on e.g. NVidia cards.

Anyway, I am expecting things like this getting worse and worse over time. Hopefully dgVoodoo will save us. As long as there is an option to stay with older drivers which still work with your older games...

Dege deserves a medal.

Yes nVidia has broken games with driver releases and then fixed it. So have AMD. That's just something that comes with the territory. The problem here is AMD throwing their hands up and saying they are unlikely to put any resources towards fixing it, despite the fact a large number of games are affected.

That means they broke something fundamental with the DirectX 9 support.

going by the list of affected games it seems a big exaggeration to call it "breaking DX9".
It's only a few games that got broken.

nevertheless, the attitude from AMD certainly stinks.

I'll update the title to be a bit more accurate. They have broken many games however and have a bad PR response about the whole situation.

Wow AMD.. they finally (kinda) catch up with Nvidia, and then they pull this s**t.

Has anybody tried to copy older driver dlls (aticfx32.dll, aticfx64.dll, atidxx32.dll, atidxx64.dll) into the game executable folders? This worked in the past sometimes. I cannot try it because I switched to nvidia...

NopeNopeNope~

I've always used Nvidia GPUs myself ( well, and some other, older ones ), but lack of competition is definitely not something we should wish for. That's rarely a good thing for the customers.

What do you mean? Their current cards are well below nVidia's in gaming. Not since the release of the Fury card have they had the best card for gaming and that was only for a short while as nVidia quickly released a monster card to trump it.