And there is more ;) Tied to answer every question. Will try to add index at and.

D. I actually am in a process of making such archive now (oldest I can get at this point at least). Bought some BluRay writer and few BR-R spindles but downloading and burning everything will take a while.
Issue is, that there is no guarantee that those installers aren't already (or will become by the time I get to them) in version that no longer work on older OSs. As for testing downloaded games (not even mentioning each patch) - not really going to happen. I will excuse GOG's dagger sticking out of my back and archive it of my own good will saying goodbye to promise they made about me being able to download it at any time if need, but I will not spend days installing testing and removing entire library, that would be crazy. This process already is sufficient punishment for every cent I spent here. You can't really multi-task without batch solution as there is something to click every couple of seconds-minutes. I spend half of my weekend watching progress bar after progress bar :/ Hardly entertaining.

With this state of affairs, I do not really see a reason for buy my games here any more, getting it from STEAM at least mean some support getting provided for Linux gaming.

E. Regarding expectations, it is good if you try to solve Linux monitor configuration yourself instead of bashing its producer for not wanting to help (if they never promised they will), however if your monitor suddenly and for no reason catch fire, not asking its producer to fix it no longer qualify for self reliance. Monitor is supposed not to start in fire and everyone can expect that. Similarly if game says it support Windows A then everyone can expect it will do just that. Not really understand how your migration to Linux apply here (although, I wouldn't recommend Arch for new user, it seem like sub-optimal patch of progress to me). Learning Linux is not supposed to be difficult, you gain little by making it that. I would recommend Debian, based on it distributions are fine as well although have their faults, from more advanced SuSe seem to be handling itself nicely so I guess OpenSuSe is not bad choice either. If you really want something raw, I recommend Slackware - you can learn how system operate down to the smallest cog there.

Ps. I would agree OS X look more interesting than Windows 10 at this point, but if you are using Linux alongside it gains seem redundant and you miss out on entertainment capabilities.

If I could use Steam I would.

Have fun.

Bye.

F. I do not really think "I am asking for trouble" just because I did not went for Windows 10. For obsolescence newer alternative must exist. Windows 10 is neither alternative for Windows XP nor it is for Windows 7. I own my Windows 7 computer. Microsoft own any one that has installed Windows 10 in similar fashion they own XBOX platform.
Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10 is like upgrading: "getting massage" to "getting run over by road roller", although idea between the two may be similar they are not exactly same thing.

Anyway, it is not like I am asking to have them add XP/Vista/7 support to new games, I am just asking them not to remove it from places it already exist (especially since they can do that at +/- zero cost).
There is a HUGE difference between asking people to give you something and asking them to stop taking your stuff...

G. Asking for Linux installer was not a best wording. Basically if they take away support from older OSs as a part of compatibility update, I expect them to provide and support for a modern OS in return. Windows 10 is not an OS to me (with Win7 & Win8 slowly turning in Win 10 one patch after another), and I do not see how it is an OS to them.
If you sell DRM-free software, that require Win10 that provide DRM service to run - you are not really selling DRM free software are you? In situation like this DRM requirement is inherited by software. Its like saying you will never go to the DRM town, then got to a car going there and claimed that you are not on a way to DRM town, and that you are just in a car and its that car that happen to be on a way there.

H. As for us geezers staying with their ancient software slowing down Windows 10 prodigy’s :p
It is not really a hindrance for Windows 10 development to have old software version (possibly just executable) laying somewhere not touched for years available for download. Hindrance for Windows 10 compatibility development is Microsoft trying to push developers to sell only through their sht store, by breaking backward compatibility to make sure developers cannot develop for both and have to choose encrypted, DRM ridden, non functional and poorly designed store, forcing you to pay 30% more and possibly setting minimal price, allowing you to play what MS want you to play, when MS want you to play given they are in good humour.

I wouldn't be so proud about being Windows 10 user. If you target any career in science, medicine, technology, mass media, security, politics (basically any job you work with your brain) having a for-profit company access to all your data (and so possibility to steal, remove, alter etc. entire portfolio of your intellectual property take ownership, counter or otherwise compromise product of your work) on a whim without any way existing for you to counter it, is equivalent to a economical/social suicide.
What are choices remaining, sucking at what you do for a leaving so there is little benefit in stealing of you?
Physical labour against 3rd world workforce? 14x7 for less than you pay for your apartment?
What will happen when they will start introducing robots on a mass scale.
With "greed is good" chanted as a mantra, profit margins increasing close to turning to religion - do you really expect they will not reach for what is yours? Heard what happened at Wells Fargo? An there were controls there.
Microsoft cloud is downloading stuff from your PC, and they are constantly scanning this this data "because terror", what control you have over what exactly they do with it on their side? Were GWX practices so great and ethical, you just feel you can trust them?

Index:

A. Do not have old installers.
B. Which games are broken, why it do not matter,
and why *keeping* compatibility do not cost a dime.
C. GOG potentially breaking false advertisements laws.
D. Downloading everything, why this getting more painful with every purchase is bad.
E. Linux discussion - not sure why exactly.
F. Using old windows versions as an self-punishment?
G. Linux installer.
H. Old windows versions hindering Win10, causing wells go dry and frogs drop from sky ;)


@tinyE
No one leaving - I paid for my games :p

This will be solved one way or another, even if I get a bulldog nickname.
It is just one of those non understandable decisions,
and a waste for all sides involved, since I do not see the point
of buying eventually-DRM-protected-DRM-free-games.

Stop being a nub. Windows 10 was a free update. It's your own fault if new updates don't support your legacy OS. :P

I would hope they would just keep a link to the older installers for those who wish to play a game on an older OS. So if a GOG game is working on XP, but GOG is moving away from supporting XP, and the said game gets updated and no longer works in XP, at least there will be a link to an installer with the last working XP version so that XP owners can still access some GOG games in the future, even though all newer games added to the service will not be fine tuned to work on XP.

Is that the only such game you know of? Aren't there any other examples?

From your wording (and the fact you even made a wishlist item out of it), I thought this is some kind of epidemic now, lots of GOG games refusing to work on some older Windows versions where they were working fine (and where even supported officially) before. Yet, you mention only reading of some issues on one game, FEZ. We don't even know if those issues are related to the version of Windows.

For FEZ specifically, what are the issues, and on which Windows versions? Note that FEZ is still a relatively new game so if there are some new issues in the game, the culprit is the game publisher/developer, not GOG.com. I first thought your blame was towards GOG.com for e.g. changing some old game installers so that they have issues on older Windows versions.

In the FEZ gamecard, these are the mentioned and supported operating systems: Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10) and Mac OS X (10.6.8). So what are the OS versions where this game doesn't work anymore?

I'm glad I didn't sign your wishlist because this whole thing seems quite odd and messy, I have seriously hard time even understanding what the actual issue is. Your recent long messages didn't make it any easier to comprehend, quite the opposite (something about you not liking Windows 10, and Linux this and that... hey, I am not using Windows 10 either at this point).

I'm confused. It sounds like you're claiming that GOG has sold games that advertised support for operating systems older than Windows 10 before and at a later date have provided updates to those games which now require that you must have Windows 10 in order to install the latest version of the game or its patches. At the same time you haven't listed any games that you've observed this happening.

I've got 523 games in my collection and have not had any problems installing any of them on Windows 7 from standalone installers to date so I can't say that I have observed what appears to be being described here. Before jumping to any conclusions and going into an emotional panic about it, could you please list all of the individual games which you have discovered which you believe only work on Windows 10, along with what evidence you have seen that has led you to this conclusion?

I'm not saying that there aren't any cases of this, just that I have not seen any personally, including any being listed in this thread so this seems like a non-problem to me unless there is actually a game where this has happened. If there is a game where this has happened, I'm inclined to believe that it would be an accident rather than intentional, whether by GOG.com themselves or by the publisher.

In lieu of someone actually stating an actual game where the claimed problem has actually occurred though, it seems like a speculative non-problem to me.



Also, for the record, I own FEZ and it runs in Windows 7 x64 no problem. Windows 7 is not Windows 10.

Thanks everyone for your inputs.

@skeletonbow
I do not expect windows 7 users to face any problems... yet.
My expectation would be Windows XP and 32-bit Vista to go down first.

@timppu
Difference of 1 vote in 2 (low) digit wish, while percentage-wise significant, won't regretfully change reality of low significance :p still hurts though ;)
I moved to GOG as a game library for reliability that DRM-free software provides.
Reliability is not something that I would like to evaluate on failure - it is something I want to be bindingly assured of.
Would you like to hear at the car dealership, that producer does not provide assurance for sit-belt reliability, but it is ok since you can ask them for fix if those sit-belts fail?

Anyway, I was thinking about it and also recently asked this question from a GOG support,
if answer will be negative then I will have to consider their motto to stand for "Division Railway Manager - free" games...
DRM was GOG's main selling point in my eyes, without it they will simply have to compete with price (even more in case physical media release will be available).

This discussion itself regretfully take too much of my time. Regardless of result ciao everyone.

I think it's a bit early to worry about this as yet.

Apparently you didn't realize that in Steam it is even worse. Even if a Steam game itself would still run fine on an old Windows version... it might be the Steam client (which is usually required to play the game) doesn't, meaning you can't play that game on that old Windows version anyway.

That's what happened to me in the past when Valve suddenly dropped support for Windows 2000 that I was running at the time. Suddenly the Steam client would just refuse to run on my PC saying that my OS is not supported anymore, meaning I couldn't run my Steam games on Windows 2000 anymore either, even though I had specifically bought those games for my Windows 2000 PC.

So if GOG has one breaking point for single player games (an updated GOG offline installer game doesn't work on an old Windows version anymore), Steam has two:

1. The game itself.
2. The Steam client that is required to run the game.

They must be similarly scratching their head like the rest of us, what exactly is the problem you are trying to address, since you even fail to mention any examples where this is a problem.

I don't think FEZ was such a valid example, I don't think it has suddenly dropped support for some old Windows version which it officially supported and worked before. FEZ supports officially Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10) and Mac OS X (10.6.8), and I am pretty sure it hasn't dropped any older (than XP) Windows version from the supported list, as if it had supported Windows 95 previously or something. :D

Also you seem to have some double-standards there too, happily using Steam where this already is an existing problem, and in a worse way (ie. if and when the Steam client itself stops supporting e.g. Windows XP, all your Steam games that depend on the client will cease working on XP as well, even if they otherwise would still run fine on it).

GoG always said that what they do is provide games (old and not so old ones) DRM-free and that works with modern OSes.

They never made any promise concerning said OSes real or imaginary DRMs, nor did they say anything about supporting outdated OSes especially if they stop being supported by their respective publishers.

It's IMHO kind of silly to expect them to do so.

You heard it through the grapevines? Do you have any first hand experience?

As for me, I've had problems with the Tomb Raider series (1 & 2 i think) being buggy on Windows 10. But I was able to fix it after a quick search on the forum/web. Be nice if they patch the game because the issue I had seems to be common enough.

I don't see why they can't allow us access to an older installer if a new update breaks the game for a dropped OS.

They could... if they knew an update made it incompatible with some old OS.

What my concern was the fact that while games themselves may not contain DRM if OS they require to run comes with one (DRM) preinstalled what's a difference? Game containing DRM and one "just requiring" DRM to be present in order to run and possibly delivering one themselves through other channel are basically the same thing...

As for downloading all titles around the time of the purchase, why remove huge benefit of online library without providing or achieving anything in return? Even more, as result the most problems would fall on people who invested into GOG the most that would now have to store and carry around possibly terabytes of data... at the same time artificially making GOG appear worse to their business partners (as if I remember correctly: purchase/download ratio is used for piracy evaluation purposes).

Then there is another thing that many may not be aware based on this discussion - you can use virtualization to run old OS'es you own safely or relatively safely (in case of online presence as long as you don't store sensitive data on it ~ and keep host OS and virtualization platform up to date) which now can be easily used for purposes of gaming as most hardware currently allow for GPU pass-through, that result in virtualized games running at near native speed (and often faster since what you do is buy best GPU supported by old OS, and not only those are very cheap, even low-powered budget GPU from OS end-support era will provide dominating performance in most titles released on it during OS lifetime). Which remove most compatibility issues and bugs from and allow gaming of near native quality, for most if not all games removing potential problems you may not even be aware you could be having and adding insane amounts of convenience that virtualization provides in general.

Ps. As for necromancy, I consider this a ridiculous concept - if you can learn from what have been written why shouldn't you add to it? Sure, many topics de-actualize over time, but there are plenty that do not even including some questions, like what was "babushka's" involvement in Kennedy assassination or nice epitaph one can put on their grave will often accept answers for quite a while...