Beyond just the games not working, won't newer hardware (especially less standard compliant hardware like GPUs) fail in Windows 7 given that nobody is updating the drivers for it anymore?

Given the above, I'm guessing the inquiry is about not wanting to update the OS on an aging rig as opposed to a desire to fixate your gaming os (something that would be tricky because of the gpu problem)?

Eventually yes. In case anyone here finds it useful as a reference later on, the last W7 compatible driver versions are:-

AMD - 21.5.2 (21/05/2021). Newest W7 supported GPU's : RX 6600-6900XT)

nVidia - 472.75 (03/12/2021). Newest W7 supported GPU's : RTX 3060-3090 (473.62 to 474.11 possibly adds RTX 3050).

Intel - 15.40.14.4352 (23/12/2015). Newest W7 supported iGPU's : HD630 (6th Gen, Skylake).

Future GPU generations released after these versions & dates (eg, AMD RX 7xxx, nVidia RTX 40xx, Intel Arc) won't be supported under W7. Obviously GPU's released before this date will continue to work on W7 by continuing to use the above driver version (or older). There were some beta drivers that were (reluctantly) released by Intel to support the HD630 (7th Gen, Kaby Lake) iGPU's, but anything 8th Gen or newer requires hacked 3rd party drivers. nVidia have the best overall W7 compatibility, AMD are behind them by a few months, whilst Intel have the absolute worst W7 support by a very large margin.

Missing features vs W10 include - nVidia : DirectX12, Freesync, DLSS, VR & pixel perfect scaling. AMD : DirectX12, Freesync, VR & FSR. The "core" graphics for most DirectX5-11, OpenGL & Vulkan games however will work fine.

That isn't the point of the thread though. Point is for someone who has the hardware that could theoretically run a gam to know whether their choice of staying with Win 7 as OS will block them from playing it.

Has the hardware is a mighty assumption. I try not to assume too much (trying to visualize all the angles where a plan might go wrong has worked well for me so far).

Honestly, I've pondered of things I could do to keep my games running in the advent that gog went out of business and no longer maintained its installers, beyond hoping that Windows compatibility layers like wine work some magic and beyond having to reverse-engineer the code of individual games.

Something that has occurred to me is that I could just fixate the OS (if push comes to shove, with vms if I have to). However, it entails that the OS will run on future hardware and the hackish GPUs (with certain driver patches released for specific games) that lack standards is one big sticking point here (that and evolving standards).

Depending on what the motivation is to keep Windows 7, this is a very pertinent consideration.

Love the idea behind this thread. Very useful. Wish it was a little more fleshed out. Shame more people aren't contributing (and fewer people digressing from the purpose of this thread). Not sure if anyone is still updating or following this but I will add a few games I have been interested in and researched.

Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind does not work on anything before Windows 10, as per here. (Though I personally find the developers excuse lame and lazy, but that is another topic altogether.)

The Winter Ember Demo does not run on Windows 7 (at least not for me) so i would assume the full game will not either.

Blue Fire looks like it will not run on Windows 7 based on what I read here on Steam.

Aron's Adventure had an old demo available (found link here) that ran just fine on Windows 7. I assume the full game would as well.

The Holomento Demo ran just fine on Windows 7 for me. Whether or not the full game will remains to be seen but it is a likely bet it will. (The game itself was no good in my opinion, but, again, that is another topic.)

The Boomerang X Demo I tried on Steam ran just fine on Windows 7, so I assume the full game would as well.

Death's Door Works fine on Windows 7 according to this thread on Steam.

Flynn: Son of Crimson Works on Windows 7 according to this thread.

Nanotale Typing Chronicles seems to be an interesting case. Both GOG and Steam list Windows 10 as a minimum requirement, but the official website says Windows 7. I will probably be buying this to try out for myself soon and will update this post with my findings when I do.

Edge of Eternity seems to be the same situation to Nanotale. GOG says Windows 8.1 minimum, Steam says Windows 10, but the official website says Windows 7. I doubt I will be testing this myself anytime soon so I probably shouldn't bother mentioning it, but if I ever do I will update this as well. (According to the Steam discussions there was a problem running it on Windows 7 for a time that was eventually fixed, but all those posts were from 2019 so who can say.)

There were a few other games I was curious about and tried looking into but couldn't find any confirmation one way or another. So I guess that is all for now.

Thanks for contributing! I started the thread and I´m still watching, just busy with real life atm. I tried to update my opening post, but it got rather long and it starts to glitch out, when I add more text. Not sure, how to solve this, but I´ll be back to it in a few days. Hopefully :)

There's a 5000-character limit. That's why such threads tend to have a number of reserved posts after the first one, in case it gets too large. Without those, you could reserve the posts now and post links to them in the OP.

Working out of the box:

AKIBA'S TRIP: Hellbound & Debriefed: Confirmed to work.

Archvale - Confirmed to work on Win 7

Aron's Adventure - has an old demo available here. The developers suggest to try it out to see, if it works on your system.

Beyond a Steel Sky - Should run on Win 7 and above according to https://www.sysrequirements.com/game/beyond-a-steel-sky and multiple other sources.

Cyberpunk 2077 - Works on Win 7 but not on Win 8.1 at the time of writing. UPDATE: Still works after patch 1.61

Death's Door - works according to this thread

Disciples: Liberation - confirmed to work on Win 7

Doom 64: confirmed to work on Win 7

Dredge: Confirmed to work.

Dungeons of Edera - confirmed to work on Win 7

Edge of Eternity - should be fixed for Win 7 since Unity patch 2019.2.3f1 and beyond, according to this

Embracelet - According to a fellow Goger, the game runs on Win7

Endzone - A World Apart - Developers confirmed it works on Win 7, see here. No info on Win 8.1

The Feast - confirmed to work on Win 7.

Flynn: Son of Crimson - works on Win 7 and Win 8 according to this thread

Gloomhaven - I can personally confirm that it works on Win 7.

GRIME - Confirmed to work on Win 7. No info on Win 8.1

GWENT: Rogue Mage - confirmed to work on Win 7

In Sound Mind - Win 7 is stated as minimum requirement on Steam. Also confirmed by a fellow Goger.

Lacuna A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure - It should run fine on Win 7 according to this thread

Mafia 3 Definitive Edition: Confirmed to work.

Mechwarrior 5 - Should run on Win 7 and Win 8.1, according to https://www.sysrequirements.com/game/mechwarrior-5-mercenaries

Nanotale Typing Chronicles - this is a special case. See all relevant info here

Neighbours Back From Hell - Confirmed to work on Win 7

Panzer Dragoon: Remake - Confirmed to work on Win 7 and Win 8.1

Paper Cut Mansion: Confirmed for Win 7.

Paradise Lost - Confirmed to work on Win 7. No info on Win 8.1

Sable - Confirmed to work on Win 7

Saints Row 3 Remastered - Citation from arstechnica forum: "It was working fine on an older Windows 7 setup, but on my current Windows 10 + intel 6-core + 32 GB + GTX-980 it won't even start up properly in DX10/11 mode..."
No info on Win 8.1 though

Serin Fate - Confirmed to work on Win 7

Serious Sam 4 Deluxe Edition - According to this Steam thread the game works fine on Win 7, but you might need Vulcan instead of DirectX 11. I (Oddeus) played through the whole game on Win 7 and DirectX 11. No problems at all.
No clear info on Win 8.1

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem - I played it on Win7 without any problems. No info on Win 8.1

Severed Steel - It runs on Win 7, but with an insignificant error message on a startup (it can be closed and all OK). How to remove the message forever

Shadow Empire - Confirmed to run on Win 7. Win 8 is stated as minimum requirement.

Spacebase Startopia - Confirmed to run on Win 7. No info on Win 8.1

Spirit of the Island - Confirmed to run on Win 7

Stranger Things 3 - The Epic Store version 1.3.857 (857) runs on Windows 7 SP1 x64

The Supper: Confirmed to work.

Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition: Confirmed to work.

The Uncertain: Light At The End - Confirmed to run on Win 7

Vesper - Confirmed to work on Win 7 and Win 8.1 with 471.68 nvidia drivers.

Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef: Confirmed to work.

Wasteland Remastered - Confirmed to run on Win 7

Wasteland 3 - According to this Steam thread it runs fine on Win 7. No info on Win 8.1

Wreckfest: Confirmed to work.

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox - Confirmed to work on Win 7. Win 8.1 is stated as minimum.

UPDATE: Also, check out this list made by iamtiredof, who puts a lot of effort into testing games and posting the results.

Working with tweaks:

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada - Though Win 7 is stated as minimum requirement, there seems to be some difficulties to make it work on Win 7 and Win 8.1. You can find the solution here.

Gamedec - Game may not launch on Windows 7 due to the missing file "XINPUT1_4.dll". Solution: Go to folder C:\Windows\System32, find file "xinput1_3.dll", copy it to the same folder and rename it as "xinput1_4.dll. And another fix here.

Mafia Definitive Edition: confirmed to work on Win 7 as long as you have dxvk installed. You can find the instructions here.

Myst (2021) - works in W7 if started with the -dx11 command line switch. (It will crash with default DX12)

Necromunda: Hired Gun - Works with the -dx11 command parameter. See here. Should work for Win 8.1 too.

Redout: Space Assault - The issue with the 1.1.0 version is its shortcut is for Windows 10 (DirectX 12). One needs to add "-dx11" to fix that.

Scorn: Seems to work with Win 7. See the solution here.

Thymesia: confirmed to work on Win 7 with the -dx11 command parameter.

Victoria 3: Confirmed to work after deleting a specific file.

Wolfenstein 2 - runs on Win 7 as long as you have Vulkan installed on your computer

Games That Worked on Windows 7 but Later Dropped Support
(Thanks to iamtiredof for all the info)

Crossroads Inn - The latest good version is 4.0.0.

Lost Ember - The latest good version is 1.0.22.

No Man's Sky - Multiplayer doesn't work anymore on Win 7. More details here.

In order to keep the number of characters low, I need to make a little modification. I will remove all the acknowledgements and links to the specific posts, since they all count towards the character limit. All contributors are still appreciated.

Are we assuming the gender as well?

Hello,

Spacebase Startopia is ok with win7 (64) for now.

I finally installed Windows 7 Ultimate (Nvidia 472.12) and the first game I tested was Tunguska: The Visitation. It runs great, no problems whatsoever. This doesn't come off as a surprise though, since the developer himself worked on Win 7. Also, game page lists Win 7, 8 and 10 as accepted systems.
I will try to test more games and share my observations.

While confirmations are always good, this thread is about the games that state that they DON'T run on Win 7, to check whether that's actually true or just a case of the devs and GOG not guaranteeing or not even testing it, or they work with issues that won't be fixed.