Thank you, I don't have the time to argue with people on the internet anymore, you have put it quite nicely.

The list just got a huge update thanks to wildhobgoblin:
https://www.gog.com/mix/games_that_have_windows_xp_support_elsewhere

Additions:
Apotheon
Block'hood
Cossacks 3: Guardians of the Highlands [DLC
Cossacks 3: Path to Grandeur [DLC]
Craft The World - Dig with Friends (multiplayer DLC)
Crashlands
Crypt of the NecroDancer
Crypt of the NecroDancer: AMPLIFIED
The Deadly Tower of Monsters
Democracy 3 and DLC
Dracula Trilogy
Dungeon Rats
Elminage Gothic
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Fallen Enchantress
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition
Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition
Giana Sisters: Rise of the Owlverlord
Grim Dawn
Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star
Her Story
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd
Little King's Story
On Rusty Trails
The Only Traitor DLC (Final station)
The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge
Pharaonic
Quest for Infamy
Rogue Wizards
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
SpellForce 2 - Anniversary Edition
Sudeki
This War of Mine
Wasteland 2: Director's Cut
Wuppo

I'm pretty sure that Apotheon and Sudeki still had XP support when I got them.
Isn't that bait and switch?
Apotheon was a gift and has a Linux port so I'm not so concerned about this, but about Sudeki.

One of the reasons why I still use XP at all is, that my system doesn't have the latest hardware and I have too few RAM for a virtual system.
Running F3, NV and Oblivion on WINE works but I get less mouse lag and more frames per second natively on my WinXP partition. Of course deactivating VSync and lowering the graphics already helps but I can have everything at ultra settings AND VSync in XP.

In your little reality, you have no qualms about enabling predatory corporations, and every time you see somebody that does you take offense, because how dare they remind you that your mental capacity limits you to regurgitating the thoughts and ideas that other people have dumped into your head.

Except what they did here is not DLL injection, but nice try.
It's not dll injection; If it was dll injection then the DLL would still be called steam_api.dll and not galaxywrp.dll.

And basically the only thing they would have needed to do would have been to implement the steam API in their own dll, rename it steam_api.dll and put it in the game folder.

But here it's the opposite, the game tries to load galaxywrp.dll and not steam_api.dll; so unless there is a way to change that by pure configuration then the change had to have been made in the code. (unless somebody "hacked" the EXE to change the name of the loaded library)

Why wouldn't Bethesda have done it as you suggest GOG could have?

There's nothing wrong with keeping each other honest, is there?

Hi all,
since some users quoted my earlier post, here are a few more facts and thoughts.

There are many dll injection techniques.
Except from the simple case of forcing to load just a renamed dll, there are more complex ways. For example if we get access to a process memory space, we may inject anything. Another way could be the Windows registry and there are more.

GOG also patches executables (injecting binary offsets).
By the way, all these things are related to reverse engineering and one doesn't exclude the other.

As to who has injected the dependency, it has always been GOG.
They have many times accepted that they receive the Steam version of games, unwrap, apply changes, rewrap (using installer and now this Galaxy thing) and finally release them.

Last time someone has accepted that was Thiev in Fallout New Vegas thread.
This post deserves reading too. It's linked to Thiev's post, but it could be missed. The API looks identical.

I don't think that does really matter who has injected the dependency. Since GOG has built the library, it has been GOG's responsibility to maintain compatibility.

There are many things GOG could have done differently, but they haven't. They could have been injected dlls through Galaxy only, keeping the offline installers clean, for instance.

EDIT: I removed multiple edits and added the text to the main post.
I think, I should have to stop edit my post. :-)

It's got nothing to do with enabling, and everything to do with APIs and drivers. OpenGL is a trainwreck, Vulkan is incredibly difficult to work with, and graphics drivers on Linux can and do lag behind at times.

If we were the sort of men that established this nation, we'd kill off Microsoft and put Windows in the public domain, which would allow it to be improved about a hundredfold, and it would put an end to despicable business practices like suing for copyright infringement, not because there's actual infringement, but as a means of minimizing competition -- and by extension, innovation.

And all the other parasites, like Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, the industrial complexes, etc., etc., etc.

I'm not a fan of most giant corps either, but your little dream world there would tank the economy.

It would tank the *casino* economy that we refer to as "the global economy", but that would allow for the reestablishment of healthy local economies that benefit the local people that comprise them, which would result in massive improvements to our living standards.

Yes, this would entail a significant amount of pain, but so does getting off heroin.

It's a pipedream to think we can go back at this point without losing access to a hell of a lot of things. Everything would have to be rebuilt from scratch, and the means to fund some things simply wouldn't exist.

...The exploitative economic bullshit makes some things possible that otherwise wouldn't be doable... even if unsustainable.

----------
Really this topic is far to broad to bother armchair theorizing. Back to the topic at hand Linux gaming is crippled not so much by Microsoft's greed as much as it is by the fact the tools available to it have... issues. OpenGL has a ton of problems and development in Vulkan is way too high level for a lot of developers.

DirectX for all it's faults has a ton of documentation, feature levels, and backwards compatibility. And the DX drivers are less scattershot than say OpenGLs. Devs aren't getting kickbacks to use DX, they're choosing to use DX. And the few that do use OpenGL tend to have rather... unique issues.

Nothing is impossible. Absolutely nothing. If you think otherwise, try proving it sometime.

The only thing we'd be backing away from is the abyss that we're rapidly approaching. We don't know whether we've already gone past the point that the damage we've done to this world's ability to support evolved lifeforms can be repaired before there is a catastrophic collapse of the food chain. But even worse is that we don't seem to care.

Anyone who thinks that's a healthy trajectory either has a death wish, or a massive degree of denial -- both of which have become prevalent in modern society.

Good catch!

It's almost like GOG wants to break the compatibility, which is disturbing. And shameful.

Wants to? Doubt it. The more likely thing is that they just didn't give a 2nd thought to the impact on an ancient and insecure OS. An OS that every other company has abandoned providing any support for eons ago.

XP's ancient carcass got years more support than it should have due to stalwarts.
I mean really lets see if anyone provides support on the Linux side of the pond to Debian 3.0.

Maybe you should try reading for comprehension because it's been made very clear that it's purely for gaming and nothing else, so "insecurity" is completely beside the point. It's also been made clear that for some people who are running linux and enjoy classic games, XP continues to enhance their gaming experience. .
I know that isn't you, and that you don't give a fook about their gaming experience, but I think it's time for you and the other hive-minded loudmouths to stop repeating yourselves over, and over, and over, ad nauseum. Furthermore, I think it's pretty low to jump on someone just because they aren't doing things the way you think they ought to be done. I know it's become cool to treat gays and lesbians more humanely, but it'd be a lot more cool if you lot could bring yourselves to extend this courtesy universally. If nothing else, you'd look a lot less like pseudo-progressive hypocrites.

Lastly, there's a big difference between wanting a company to not break compatibility if it isn't necessary, and wanting a company to provide "support". But hey, maybe this is GOG's way of telling linux users that they're not important enough to be treated with common courtesy anymore. Or maybe GOG is just incredibly dysfunctional and is struggling to get it's shit together. Whichever the case may be, the level of dishonesty I'm seeing in this ongoing discussion re installers and sleazy marketing practices, and now compatibility, tells me that this isn't a good place for anyone who likes to avoid being in toxic environments. Which is actually quite fine, because there are far more pressing things going on in this fucked up world of ours.