I've bought a few of games from GOG, and I'm generally happy with them. But there is one thing about all of them that bothers me: every time I run a GOG game, Windows tells me that I have to grant the game administrator rights to run it. (ie. the screen goes dark and a popup window appears asking "Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to your computer?")

I can understand that the game might want admin rights for installation, and some games might even need admin rights to play if they are installed in the Program Files directory – but in general, I'm quite sure that these games shouldn't need admin rights. Indeed, I have non-GOG versions of a few of these games already and none of them need admin rights to run. So why does GOG ask for it? It makes me a bit uncomfortable that GOG games require my trust every time I run them.

I don't expect that the games will do anything malicious, either through bugs or by design, but nevertheless I'd prefer not to have to explicitly give the games permission to mess with important stuff on my computer every time I want to play.

GOG's common troubleshooting steps page suggests that users should turn off UAC. To me, that seems like poor advice. Turning off UAC doesn't change the fact that GOG games require admin rights to run; all it does it stops Windows from asking the user every time those rights are required. Besides, turning off UAC doesn't just affect GOG software; it affects everything else on the computer as well. I actually think it's rude for GOG to ask users to configure their OS in a particular way just to run GOG software. In my view this is much worse that just telling users to use "run as administrator", because disabling UAC may end up causing problems in the future with unrelated (non GOG) software.

So, I'd like to know, is there any good reason why GOG games ask for admin rights every time they are run? And if there isn't a good reason, I request that future GOG game launchers be programmed such that they don't do this.

i dont diable the UAC either

but one good reason is if its not the admin when your running it the save data gets dumped to a different location.
whereas if it was run as admin it would have access to the 'highly protected' C:\Program Files folders.

i lost many hours of Waking Mars c/o this admin issue (not the GOG version, but it would be the same with the GOG version im sure).

only found out when i went to resume.

some of the 'GOG 2.0 installers' seem to avoid this folder, possibly c/o this issue.

>_<

each OS has its own uniquely idiotic nuances im sure there are more good reasons, but the save data issue was the clincher for me.

Do you still need admin rights if you install it in a folder that's different from Program Files/x86? I always do that, for this reason and easier to keep track if all my games are in a specific folder rather than mixed between applications.

Depends on the game. Of the ones I have installed at present DN3D doesn't give a UAC warning while HOMM3, Eador: G, FTL and Real Texas all do, they're all installed into C:\GOG Games, not Program Files.

You have a space. Out of those, reinstall either Eador, FTL or Real Texas onto a location like this:
C:\GOG
C:\

I think you'll have to wait for a blue to explain why some requires admin rights but I remember reading in some article that it is more common for older games to do it but I can't remember the source nor the reason for it unfortunately.

Out of curiousity I installed HOMM3 without admin rights and I re-check the already checked admin rights for heroes3.exe and game still starts. Then again, I sit on a user with full admin rights (not just psuedo) and I've completely turned off UAC. I'll do some testing with permissions to see if there's any difference.

What the fuck!?

That line should be removed immediately. This is 95% because GOG sets them to require admin rights anyway. Fixed that for you. :p if they cared about such issues so much, they would have spent 30 minutes to read about a particular OS and avoid raising security concerns for no good reason.

It does, it pretty much stops the whole Windows Runtime from running on Windows 8+ OSes.

Because they thought it would be an easy and lazy workaround. Many games here that I've played do not require admin rights at all, yet they (GOG) set up a compatibility flag anyway.

Because there are hundreds of system with unique configuration out there. They just put it there just to be safe, it isn't harmful either. I remember playing some games that won't work properly without administrator mode. Psychonauts is one of them. The game would crashed each time after saving on my Win 7 x64 system installed in the default Program Files.

There are dozen other ways to solve this. Giving administration rights to applications is not really all that good, if an application has a security vulnerability being actively targeted, it could do some nasty things to the OS.

Next step on the road to glory. Turn off Windows Firewall 'because it might interfere with some games' and Windows Defender 'because it might interfere with some games'.

Right, right. I actually have those running all the time since they don't have UAC's obnoxious behavior.

I turn UAC off.

UAC, about as useful as tits on a Hanar.

If the 'protected' status of the program files directory is the only reason for the admin requirement, then in my view it would be good if GOG would only request admin privileges for games that are actually installed in program files - and only for games which want to write their files there anyway.

I think it's fair enough that GOG doesn't want to reprogram very old games just to make them put their save games in the proper place - but I also think it would be good if GOG checked which games do this and which don't so that they don't need this blanket admin requirement on all their games.

Incidentally, the default directory for GOG games isn't in program files anyway.