What is the verdict on Windows 10 from gamers?

It`s crap, period.

At least crap doesn't normally spy on you.

FWIW, I upgraded to Windows 7 from that steaming pile. And I'm recommending my mother buy a new computer before they run out of laptops with upgrade rights to Win 7.

Windows 10 here. Smooth as silk, better than Windows 7 overall. What's crap for you doesn't mean it's crap for other people.

Or perhaps you don't know how to operate the OS....

Being spied upon has very little to do with knowing how to use a computer. I can't speak for the other poster, but I've been using computers longer than most humans have been alive. It's about 29 years at this point.

The OS is a dog, MS has been giving it away because they know they can't sell sufficient quantities of it and are hoping that people won't realize that there are better options out there.

Well, if you want to lie in bed with the Stasi, well, that`s your beer!!! :-) Oh, and if you want to play older games with copy protection... Well then you`re fecked!!!
Oh, and about the thing with operating an OS... Well, I`ve been playing computer games since the begin of the eighties, so I have seen many operating systems and I survived them all!!! :-)

It`s bullshit, garbage, nothing I would buy.

Edith says: Corrected an error.

That it comes out of the anus? By that definition win10 it would be crap... Or farts...

its still very early to say

For now, gaming is not the reason to upgrade to it. Overall it seems to have pretty good backwards compatibility, but some games can break (like if you have any old retail games with certain SecuROM versions, or even some GOG games do have issues, but maybe GOG will fix most of those issues, e.g. I see a new Carmageddon 2 installer has appeared which supposedly fixes the Win10 installation issues with that game; but then I already see someone reporting the new version crashes when you try to run the game?).

If you have a higher end PC, then in the future DirectX12 games will probably become a reason to use Windows 10. If you mainly play older (GOG) games or indies, e.g. because your PC is not up to new AAA stuff, then this is not relevant.

If you have Windows 8.x, then I feel an upgrade to Windows 10 is overall well worth it either way, because Windows 10 feels more like a proper desktop OS than Windows 8.x.

I personally will keep Windows 7/64bit on my current PCs where I have it, and any future PC which I will buy (e.g. for future AAA games) will obviously have Windows 10 preloaded. So my future Windows 10 PCs will run those future DirectX12 titles then.

Also, naturally one benefit of Windows 10 is that it will be officially supported much farther to the future than either Windows 7 or 8. That's the reason why I am still reserving (and temporarily installing, and then downgrading) a free copy also to those Windows 7 PCs even if I am not going to use it on them for now. Maybe later, when the support of Windows 7 ends. Or not, maybe install Linux Mint on the side of Windows 7. I'll decide then.

Haven't had any problems so far, other than the 2 imperialism games not running, though I haven't tried them with the latest updates. If you do install Win10 though, do take some time to go through the options to set it up like you want, and you may be interested in O&O ShutUp10 and Portable Update as well, since those two programs do fix most of the "complaints" about Windows 10.

It's a decent OS, but AFAIK there's no point in upgrading at the moment.
Might as well wait a while, it's rarely a good idea to be an early adopter.

Personally, I worry about the direction of M$. Having used their products for many years (back to MS-DOS days), I am sad to say that most decisions I have seen over the last few years (since exitGates) have left me drastically underwhelmed. The newer interface and things like protected view in Office (although not that new) reallly haven't improved the product, hence I now use OO at home. Vista was truely one of the worst OS/es I have had the misfortune to use. Win8/8.1 its pretty underwhelming, clunky metro interface. Win 7 was ok though (a brief spark in the dark). Hotmail has now gone through two changes, one from Hotmail to Outlook.com, and the recent one, which have at each times drastically reduced how much I use it. IE pretty much doesn't work anymore. The list goes on.

Now there is this new OS for which there is lots of reports of spying practices, and ask yourself the question, why are they giving it away? For me, I don't have plans to move to it any time soon. I will keep Win 7, 8.1 around and dual boot Linux. Its a shame that a company which brought so much over the years just doesn't have that hold over me anymore. And no, Apple is not an option.

As for the privacy concerns, overall I am against MS turning Windows PCs to similar spyware havens as e.g. Google products or Facebook, but then I am unsure if you really have any option if MS has backported those same "features" to also Windows 7/8.x.

So if you really want to avoid that, maybe the only option would be Linux. For most that is probably not the correct answer. For me it partially is, I'm more and more dividing my PC time in Windows and Linux, but gaming still takes place only in Windows.