There were about three threads on this in late June/early July.

The short answer to your question is STOP SCAREMONGERING. The slightly longer answer is "At this stage, there is no definitive information, but based on early experiences with Windows 11, it's similar enough to Windows 10 for application compatibility to not be a concern".

Also covered in previous threads. There has been no news to indicate that WoW64 is being deprecated, 32-bit compatibility is being maintained. People keep getting confused by MS saying that they're not going to sell 32-bit versions of the OS (which makes perfect sense as nobody is buying 32-bit processors for Home or Office PC use anymore). MS have not said that they're dropping WoW64.

It’s possible older games might stop working. Eventually most of them will (on Windows 17 or so). No need to worry though, you can always install an older OS (either natively or within a virtual machine). At some point an emulator for old windows games might appear.

Then someone will write a compatibility layer. There are millions of windows users worldwide, so any changes like that will have a big impact. Not to mention you can dual boot, virtual image, or have something like dosbox etc. The only thing that worries me is the stores, GFWDead highlighted the fact that M$ are incapable of making a store system that isn’t dreadful and cripples everything that touches it.

They will all work since W11 is very similar to W10, even more similar than say windows 7 compared to 10.

Despite the fact, that 11 seems to have similar architecture to Windows 10, I am still a bit concerned.

Up to this day I see plenty of GOG games which had release date (on GOG) before Windows 10 release and plenty of them are still officialy not "adjusted" to Windows 10. Fortunately, community has provided some fixes (probably one of the best known is swapping dll files for Battle Isle: Incubation). I'm still using Windows 8, and so far I have Windows 10 only on my GPD Win - and fortunately, I was able to deal with most of the "troublesome" games I wanted to install on GPD Win.

So I could say, that I personally don't have that issue... but it's because I'm not afraid of experimenting and looking on forums for solution. And plenty of costumers are expecting, that they won;'t need to do this stuff when buying games on GOG (to be honest, I think that it's reasonable expectation)

Still, I'm strongly convinced, that with Windows 11 "growing in numbers", not only games so far being not adjusted (at least officialy) to Windows 10 will have problems, but also some games which are in theory adjusted to Windows 10, will have some issues. Of course someone could say, that issue will only occur for single games... Still, I guess that none of us would like to be in the situation, when suddenly one of your favourite games will stop working on new Windows. No partcular reason.

I admit that I'm not techically fluent enough to explain it, but basing on my private observation, there are always some titles which are suddenly making problems on new Windows release, even if it's very close to the previous one.

Why are you saying I am scaremongering? It's a legit question, IMHO.


OS changes have impacted me pretty directly. I've got many CD's lying around that probably wouldn't work on Windows 10, even if I did have an optical drive, which I regrettably do not.

As an example, I've got a CD copy of a game called Heretic II. I've never played it, it was passed down on to me, and quite frankly, I don't even know what the game is about and what genre it belongs to. However, given its age, I would be surprised if it worked on Windows 10.


Plus, we GOG gamers are a tiny droplet in a huge ocean. The vast majority of gamers only stick to Steam and other DRM-ed sites, and they couldn't care about older, classic games. These people would exchange 100 old school classics for 1 Battlefield or COD game. So it wouldn't be surprising if Microsoft simply cut the ties with those older titles.

For the reasons outlined in my post. Your question has previously been asked and answered in this forum.

Also, Heretic II does work on Windows 10. As will most of your games on optical media. You'll just need to learn to tinker a bit, like everyone else does. For further reference, see the other threads on Windows 11.

"legit questions" don't exclude scaremongering, necessarily.
It's like shouting BOMB!!! at an airport. Being honestly afraid doesn't excuse the behaviour.

Pretty sure he doesn't handle that stuff anymore and is just a figurehead. He's too busy trying to reduce carbon emissions on his formula by probably reducing a number to near zero, which may include humans... and his preferred method is vaccines...

But for instance Fallout 3 was released in the XP era (so the 2nd last operating system before Windows 10, as nobody really ever cared about 8) and it doesn't work on Steam anymore, you need to buy it from GOG. So new OS' can decimate your library. In this case, if you bought Fallout 3 on Steam before you switched to 10, you are screwed.

Plus, GOG themselves have said that new OS' are problematic

How is Windows 11 better in that regard???


EDIT actually, it appears that Fallout 3 launched in the 7 era, meaning it existed on a last or second last (depending on if you count 8) OS before 10, but Steam users can't play it

what are you worried about, its not like old gog titles worked good on xp or 7 or 10 eighter.

I can confirm the EE builds of Baldur's Gate 1,2 and BG3 run fine on my test beds of 11 but these are new hardware we are testing not 10 year old laptops packed with low market parts

Its not just games, but the internet, the birds, the bees. Everything you have ever posted will stop being there. Time will stop happening.

AT LAST! ASCENSION!

If it works on Windows 10, there's no reason as to why it should not work on Windows 11. Going from 10 to 11 is probably going to be like how it was going from 7 to 8 - not a huge jump.

Where my existing library got decimated when going from Windows 8 to Windows 10 (after my prior laptop's sound failed such that I would be forced to play everything no sound or buy a new one) was primarily due to CD/DVD-ROM based software that had DRM in it that was not supported on Windows 10. My only DRM casualties that cannot be purchased through GOG were fixed through patches. Blizzard released an official patch for Warcraft 3, and I'm using an unofficial patch for The Sims. Essentially I will get all my favorites back and without DRM - some I'm just waiting on the next big GOG sale.

I had a very small handful of games that used Adobe Flash as their base and those don't run, not because of Windows 10 in and of itself but because Flash itself was discontinued thus is not installed on this computer. If I was willing to install Flash on this computer, they probably would work -- but we're talking about four just okay games that were on a compilation disc, so they're not worth it.

The other stuff that I haven't been able to get to work at all are two games that I happen to have discs for that were released on Windows 3.1 as getting them to work would require installing Windows 3.1 under DOSbox (or finding a Windows 3.1 emulator if one exists) then running them from there... and they're also fall into the just okay category of just not worth all that effort. These games were not working under Windows 8 either, so it's not just Windows 10 that is guilty here. As for why they're not thrown out, other family members are insistent that maybe I'll want to make them work. Nope.

Finally there is Betrayal in Antara. The game were something happened to it such that no computer in this house can read one of the disc regardless of their operating system. This isn't a Windows 10 problem, just a damaged disc problem.

I've been able to get everything else that I already owned to work. Some required a bit of effort beyond patches, such as how Neverwinter Nights Diamond edition needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows XP Service Pack 2. I used these same compatibility settings for this game on Windows 8, which would mean that I'd just keep using the same compatibility settings with Windows 11.