Yeah, I know. I'm not naive to the way GOG has treated non-Galaxy users. *sigh*

Currently, as i see it, the preservation program is a "2 edged sword" with some suitable and some potentially critical aspects. Related to Dragon Age Origin, i was keeping the old Installer on my archive, as, so far i see no issue with the old installer, so no reason to update or add a new installer. The main issue is the lack of access on the old installer for anyone not anymore owning the old installer, not necessarily the "new installer" itself..

I surely do recommend, for anyone using offline-installers, to make a archive. Yes, dependable on the amount of games this is no easy feat as the data size can get huge... and high capacity data-center drives are expensive.

Usually i keep a legacy-archive (which is demanding on the data size) of most of my games, unless the game is so broken that the old files are guaranteed to be rendered useless as soon as there is a update, for example "Stalker 2".

I don't know about the other games but before 2019 one had to add DGVodoo2 to be able to play on hardware mode but on the 2019 update wich add compatibility with Win 10, hardware mode was working fine for me without any extra tools. That said, it added a bug on tha planet selection (level selection).
There was a update on 2021 but changelog only mentions mentions DEP related issues.

can't for the life of me properly insert links in the middle of the text, so here it is: https://www.gog.com/forum/populous_series/enjoy_populous_the_beginning_in_glorious_d3d_a_guide

The proposed idea of a separate "Patch" for Preservation Program files for Offline Installers users is simply necessary, even mandatory.

To exclude offline installers users of their bought original, unaltered, version of the games is outrageous. Remember: We don't have rollback feature for Offline Installers, therefore, if after the game being added to the preservation program it breaks, we are at the mercy of GOGs to rollback the files or fix the problem, and by what we can see in the OP and second post, this can take months - or, as we unfortunately know: May never be fixed.

Once again GOG team, sorry for being so harsh, but yeah, this is the kind of thing that we, the community, have talked about before. Please - take a look and plan this program better.

This is how it has to be done in the first place. Unless they tested these "updates" on a very large variety of different system configurations, which I doubt they did. With all the honesty, GOG Preservation Program in its current state won't make me use GOG Galaxy. I don't see any good reason to hold rollback feature exclusively for Galaxy users only, so offline installers users should be able to use it as well.

Added another argument to post 2 respectifully as I think its also important for us to understand why this warning is not an exaggeration.

Quote below:

I'm not sure that the Game Preservation thing, isn't just business as usual, except GOG are now doing a big promotion about it.

That said, I have been seeing lots of game updates, and I am concerned that many of them, just have an update for Game Preservation adverts.

A number of folk here certainly seem to be sucked in by the promotion, going by all the posts and threads.

I'll eat my words, if anyone can point out what GOG are doing different game preservation wise.

And in reality GOG enable game preservation by us, really. Sure, they are trying to ensure games work on latest Windows, but at any time the GOG store could die, and then where would we be.

No one entity can do Game Preservation.

I'm doing my bit, downloading Offline Installers and backing them up to multiple portable drives.

We all can do game preservation, we all, not a single entity, thats true.

It is just to big of a thing to be handled by "a single entity"... so, together we are strong.

I i think many of the "game preservation updates" was not required and may even lead to make a game incompatible with some foreign mods and solutions (in some cases it may even not go along with some system specs), so it can become tricky. Either way, it is important not to alter original game files in a way that it may become incompatible with anything trying to mod this original source. If so... at least always provide the "original source" as well.

To GOG, i feel it is mainly marketing... and trying to set a certain image in which they actually got a strong "connection" and user backup. So, by common sense and in economy terms it is a good idea as it may help boosting their "image". People may remember "ah yes, those people... GOG, they are trying to achieve preservation and alike"... surely nothing bad nor wrong. However... it has already been said, it is simply tricky and it should be handled with care and always with the original sources... ultimately everything, yes everything... and this is the most tricky part of preservation... not the "making it compatible thing"... everyhing need to be backed up. So, everyone should prepare themself to become a "data hauler" or lets say "a true archieve"... because this is the most important part of preservation. Increasing compatibility comes after... or if the source is actually already "in a safe spot".

I simply always back up the stuff, even the old files... no matter the cost.

A separate 'GOG preservation patch' is a really, really good idea.

Because what is a really, really good idea is to have many different version to maintain parity with. *two thumbs up*

As opposed to letting GOG larp as coders and screw up games by default so they don't always function properly outside their limited testing environment and/or break compatiblity with community fixes or source ports?

The community has always done a better job at preservation, I'd rather the priority be on leaving games intact.

(*Looks at Galaxy, Galaxy Rollback, and those calling for a Galaxy Exclusive GOG Workshop*), you're pointing fingers at all the wrong people there...

Am I crazy or is calling altering a thing "preservation" kind of insane? I mean, doesn't "preservation" by definition mean keeping the thing in it's original state?

I think GOG's real problem is they've mis-sold and confused the hell out of everyone with the Preservation Program by mixing up two different things (Game Preservation vs Compatibility Tweaking) trying to push some unrealistic promise of "GOG versions = tweak-less games forever!" There's a very obvious situation where that's going to fall apart:-

Let's say GOG started this program years ago and their preservation tweaks included adding : "Wobak's Widescren Patch" to NOLF (pretend they sell it), TafferPatcher to Thief, OTP UI Fix to Deus Ex, various classic "NoCD's" to games, etc. Fast forward 10 years almost all of these old tweaks are obsolete today. The biggest irony of all is that if GOG had gone out of business between then and now, the people today who will have the easiest job adding newer replacement NOLF Modernizer, Kentie's Launcher, NewDark, etc, patches / mods to the same respective games will be the Steam / retail disc owners who have that "clean base" to work from, whilst GOG users will be left with a lot of outdated "preserved" versions where they first have to learn to "pick apart" the outdated pre-installed tweaks, files & registry entries to avoid layering conflicting new mods on top of older ones, or tomorrow's new patches refusing to install because the expected checksum is wrong...

Similarly, imagine the absolute nightmare DOSBox developers of 2002-2010 would have faced if "DOS game preservationists" of 1996-2001 started deleting random game files deemed "unnecessary for this modern Windows ME OS which is all that matters to game preservation" instead of just keeping 'clean' copies of the DOS games intact. Now extrapolate that to the future = GOG's Preservation Program that doesn't give people at least the option of a clean base, tries to code everything around W11, etc, is only going to not screw GOG users over as long as GOG remain in business for the next 50 years constantly reapplying new tweaks every few years, almost like a "keep alive" online service in itself...

I sincerely hope they are still around that long, but... hard-coding games only to one single OS version then throwing bits of the original away is really not what 'Game Preservation' had ever been at all. Real preservation is often just a very boring exercise in long-term data archival. Compatibility Tweaking is what gets old games to run on today's hardware, but that's never really been "future proof-able" by adding one "patch of the day" then tossing away the original, as so many mods have come and gone and been replaced by newer ones that often require that clean base to be installed from. I can see a lot of problems with this stuff 10-20 years down the line...

Judging from experience, spamming the forum will not help at all. GOG has, by now, a long tradition of ignoring the forum. We're a too small part of their customer base. If you want to be seen by the GOG marketing and sales team, you will have to spam their social media accounts.

It was the same way with the DRMed Hitman release. GOG ignored the outcry in the forum and only started to react after they were bashed across their social media accounts.

Without a noticeable reaction, GOG will just continue breaking things and advertising that as service. And if they end up killing the offline installers altogether in the process, their marketing department will be very, very happy. They want everyone to have to use Galaxy, after all.