I was stoked to find out my GOG collection had DRM free, not-linked-to-login-servers offline installers for all my games. I happily installed loads of my collection on my new Windows XP retro set up. However, when going to run the games, I frequently saw "Missing opengl32.dll" errors. I found through troubleshooting it wasn't just that one file. I regularly found games were looking for glu32.dll, opengl32.dll and msvcr100.dll. Thankfully I ended up on dll-fiiles.com, downloaded older 32-bit versions of these files blindly, pasted them into the game install folders, and hooray, the games started working!

I am just wondering if anyone else has encountered these errors, because I tried reinstallling my graphics card drivers and considered formatting windows before finding a workaround.

Installing these fixes most issues for most games:-
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/does_anyone_know_the_libraries_and_other_software_required_on_a_clean_install/post4

Yeah did you read my post though? It's OpenGL and related core libraries. All there is on the page you linked is DirectX and .NET Frameworks and other miscellanea, none of which is related. After reading I'm a bit sad to find out it's common that these GOG installers are missing dependencies. More work needs to be done.

Can GOG legally include them?

Perhaps the problem lies in installing games prepared for modern machines on an old and unsupported by GOG operating system?

reckon so sadly

From what I see, OpenGL support depends entirely on the video hardware and driver, so if you have a GPU and driver that support the minimum OpenGL version required, there should be no need for those files to be bundled with anything else, while if you don't it'll likely be pointless for them to be bundled. So if the games work if you add those files manually, maybe there's some misconfiguration on your system?

Also keep in mind that GOG even broke XP support for games that originally had it, mainly due to adapting them for Galaxy (even if they're in the offline installers, the builds themselves being the same).

Right, so it could be a something on my end. Well that's good to know, I can figure that out.

Gotta say, coming here feels less and less like people remember what the O stands for in GOG. Support for old systems is implied in the name. If that's no longer the reality, I'll just go back to boxed games and physical media.

No it's not. The original pitch for GOG, besides DRM free, was making old games digitally available and getting them to work well on modern machines. Not older machines. Both aspects are rooted in game preservation, not old school hardware.

and so they do. They patched quite a few games to be compatible with modern systems.

But sometimes runtime libraries are not present on a system that used to be present on older systems, so they need to be installed manually. By updating my systems since Windows 7 (->8 -> 10 -> 11) I got have most of them present, but often they are missing on fresh installations. And in my job I had to figure out why after a Windows 10 update the database drivers would not work with OpenJDK anymore, the updated removed some crucial 32 Bit files.

Of course GOG can't include each and every runtime library with every game and with the manpower they have, it's impossible to figure out for every game which files it will need on which Windows version.
But they should link to the installers.
That thread mentioned above should be a page on GOGs homepage, part of the FAQ.

I did but as Cavalary said, I can't recall OpenGL libraries ever not being installed with GPU drivers though. Even though nVidia & AMD have long stopped supporting XP 32-bit, perhaps you can find another older GPU driver that matches your hardware that does include it? It's a mixed bag. Old games do tend to continue to work on older OS's until they get deliberately broken (see Fallout NV vs Galaxy). Likewise, in theory GOG only support old games on new OS's, in practise, that depends on the OS as there's quite a few "we support this game on Ubuntu 14/16/18" that remain like that long after Ubuntu 20/22 came out...

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It never was the reality. GOG routinely patches and updates older games to ensure they run on modern OSes and that might break compatibility with originally supported OSes. Boxed copies from way back are and have always been the best way to retro game on age-appropriate hardware and ensure developers don't sneak in "remasters", patch out LAN multiplayer or break compatibility with certain drivers.

Mind you some of the GOG releases are binary identical to boxed copies/retail releases of said games, it's just that you can't always tell when that is the case or not, so you're playing compatibility russian roulette.

And they still do. Installing a library once in a while should not be asked to much from a Windows user.
And since most games need the same libraries, it's usually a once per Windows lifetime installation.

It has been quite a while since I had to install something. All games I buy these days run from scratch.


What I would expect from GOG however was a guide and a page with the according downloads. Yes. The "redistributables" from Microsoft can be bundled with software that uses them.

It's hard to tell however what's needed, many systems already have all these libraries installed.
Everyone interested in Retro gaming should at least install the DotNet and legacy 32 Bit C++ bundles. They are needed by about every older game, just as DirectX is needed.

A official guide in GOGs FAQs or on the games download page would be very welcome however.