Microsoft recently announced a new installer format that lets (game) developers package their apps and games: (put YouTube.com in front of /D6YAJxFsmuM?t=8m4s - the forum blocks me from posting links). This format can be used for the Microsoft Store but that is not mandatory. The installers can be distributed as downloadable files.

One of the benefits of this for users is that these installers create an "installation container" that can be cleanly removed. Another benefit is that the applications packaged in this format can be installed and uninstalled by the OS itself - this gives a cleaner experience for the user. There are more benefits, some of which are shown in the attached screenshots.

Please watch the session "MSIX: Inside and Out" on channel9.msdn.com (unfortunately the forum doesn't let me post the link) for more details. The attached screenshots come from this session.

I'm not affiliated with Microsoft; I simply dislike my registry and disk slowly being polluted when old-fashioned uninstallers do not completely clean up after I completed a game.

Does GOG.com have plans to provide its (existing) games using this format?

Does this work with Windows < 10? If no, I doubt they'll switch anytime soon.

I can think of several reasons why GOG should never ever use these installers, starting with the fact that it's a proprietary format. For starters, a switch to msix would surely be a major bitch to all users who primarily play on platforms not officially supported by GOG and depend on being able to extract the installers. Plus, depending on Microsoft's mood, these msix installers are more likely to stop working over the course of Windows updates than GOG's current Inno installers.

Anyway, the last thing we need is GOG supporting Microsoft's misguided efforts to close down its platform.

Edit: Crap, and now a post where I wrote bullshit got high rated, lol.

Very hard to trust Microsoft and has been for many years,any time they have a good idea there is always a catch.And this is one,you just need to think about it.

At the end of the "MSIX: Inside and Out" session on channel9.msdn.com they showed a prototype running on Windows 7. This required a command-line tool because in that case the OS doesn't know how to handle this new format (this is not yet officially supported, they just showed that they are looking into it). The command tool was based on the open source tooling from the Microsoft/msix-packaging repository on Github (the forum doesn't let me post the link). This prototype can be seen on YouTube if you add /FKCX4Rzfysk?t=47m48s to the YouTube url.
For games where Windows < 10 support is relevant, GOG could optionally offer the new installer technology in parallel to the legacy one not to exclude users. I hope that you're saying not saying this on purpose just to spread misinformation - because it is not a proprietary format.
The sdk for it is open source and available in the /Microsoft/msix-packaging repository on Github. The sdk is also available for non-Microsoft platforms like Linux, macOS, Android and iOS.

i am pretty sure support for win <10 is relevant for all games. at least I don't recall seeing a win10 exclusive game show up here.
secondly, given that this a very new project that MS revealed, waiting a bit to let it mature is probably a good idea.
it typically is with every software project ;)

^ Requiring we go back to the command line like it's the early 1990's / MS-DOS 5 for half the pre W10 install base doesn't really sound like much of an upgrade from the existing GOG installers that manage to install / uninstall everything just fine without needing a command line. I've honestly never had any problem with GOG's offline installers not uninstalling something, and doubling up everything just sounds like "make-work" (on top of the already unnecessary Galaxy vs Classic) sounds like 4x offline installer variants are needed, which just confuses people new to GOG.

If anything I share some people's suspicions that it's just another in a long string of desperate attempts at artificially breaking pre-W10 compatibility by demanding the the most trivial of tasks that have been stable for 30 years now be redone in a W10 exclusive way... Problem is, "Microsoft marketing speak" talks of "legacy" as if it's some fringe case when in reality, 29,995 out of 30,000 x86 games (and all 2,439 out of 2,439 GOG games) and 99% of software in general made over the past 30 years are all pre-W10 relevant. The only "W10 only" stuff is literally a tiny handful of DX12 / W10-Store exclusive MS branded games like "Sea of Thieves". And half of those "needs W10" games end up being re-released on Steam with full W7-compatibility (and amusingly with fewer technical issues) due to poor Windows Store sales (see Quantum Break).

I think the "litmus test" for Microsoft's intentions is ultimately "are they going to patch W7, W8, etc, to be fully MSIX aware"? If not, then the underlying motivation is quite obvious...

Fair enough, the MSIX fromat itself is indeed based on a "BSD-like" license, wasn't expecting that at all based on how the thing works. And even direct extraction seems to be perfectly possible. Only the packaging tool seems not to be open source.

My point still stands, though, that with MSIX not being self-contained installer packages, control is shifted away from the user and and even the app developers. You have to trust the OS to execute the installation the way you want it and live with limitations that you don't have with self-contained third-party installers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but during the Q&A session the guy seems to admit that currently with MSIX it is not even possible to choose a custom installation path per app (which would probably keep several GOG games, which have trouble with various installation paths, from operating properly). From what I gather it's also indeed perfectly possible that a Windows update will alter the way MSIX installations are handled and potentially result in changes that might affect whether an application works even if it did perfectly fine when the package was originally created.

Also, I created several GOG-style installers for older games for personal use myself and in order to mantain compatibility I occasionally had to do some wacky shit, like putting a single file in a very specific folder because the game was hardcoded to look there. With Inno I could script that kind of behaviour into the installer and also make sure that file gets removed when the game is uninstalled. From what I understand with MSIX you'd have to create the file "in-app" and it would actually be impossible to make sure that it is removed when the game is uninstalled.

Anyway, to me it seems that MSIX is unsuitable for GOG's downloadable installers.

I do agree there, it is not a decision to take overnight :).

However I'd like to point out that the appx format (which is shares principles with this new technology) is already out for some time and for users it already gives benefits (although for distributors I believe it requires you to distribute through the Microsoft Store, which I understand that GOG.com does not want to do).

This is where the new format comes in - it gives the possibility to distribute through your own channels (like a download from your website).That's why it might be interesting for GOG.com to look at. I didn't say that it has to be a command-line thing. I only said that they showed a prototype that is indeed a command-line tool. I agree that a GUI version would be better. I don't have the opinion that OSes in general have to keep supported The mainstream support for Windows 7 (Service Pack 1) ended on January 13, 2015, and the extended support ends on January 14, 2020.
The mainstream support for Windows 8.1 ends on January 9, 2018, and its extended support will end on January 10, 2023.

This means that sticking to old technologies for users who decide to run unsupported OSes is just a courtesy or favor, and it has the possibility of paralysing progress.

It is not a Microsoft thing to have a certain support period - Apple does the same thing. For instance you can't install 32-bit apps anymore on recent iOS versions.

The hilarious thing is that with your reasoning modern versions of Windows should not support old software and GOG should not support older versions of Windows which means that many games available on GOG would simply not be playable at all anymore.

There's better ways of doing this that have been around for years and there hasn't been any interest. I've used them in the past, but it's been so long since I used any of them that I can't recall what they were called.

What's more, the 3rd party apps work without need of GOG's support.

Not to mention the fact that there's a ton of games on here that will run just fine on older versions of Windows until and unless GOG chooses to outright revoke support. Games from 20-30 years ago shouldn't require a new version of Windows to run. And, if you properly secure the OS from the network, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to for the next hundred.

Unless I'm missing something, I'm pretty sure people have hosted .EXE's on their sites for years. Microsoft claiming they're just invented "allowing you to download programs from a website" is like them announcing "Yesterday, we invented ice-cream"... First of all, most games packaged as "UWP apps" are a total mess with a whole string of restrictions vs Win32:-
https://www.pcgamer.com/why-pc-games-should-never-become-universal-apps/

Secondly, I'm still struggling to understand exactly what the advantage of this is supposed to be vs an installer which already just works normally. It seems MS's new format looks good on paper only when you compare it to the worst and most broken "legacy" installers. And the "benefits" listed in your two attached pics can easily become the opposite:-

"Single instance storage of files across users" - We've already got that. You already don't need to install 3x copies of the same game / MS Office 3x times on the same PC, if that PC has 3x users. Windows going back +20 years is already intelligent enough to just switch different user folders. In fact, I can't ever think of a time when Microsoft's claim was true...

"Windows installs, updates & removes" - So basically, Microsoft wants the OS to take control of GOG / Steam game updates? How's that going to work?

Differential updates at the block level - It's obvious "delta updates" where just the OS itself is doing the update are only going to work stuff sold from the MS store. Windows by itself can't talk to 3rd party distributors (GOG / Steam servers) which is precisely why you need Steam / Galaxy instead of Windows Update doing game updates in the first place...

"Tamper Protection" - So it's highly likely to break modding plus compatibility with common gaming tools like Cheat Engine, SteamMover, Rivatuner, Borderless Gaming, XPadder, streaming tools, etc, that need to "see" a game's .EXE? If it doesn't run as an .EXE, then it'll also break auto-detection in AMD / nVidia drivers and firewall exception rules for running a "whitelist" Firewall. How do you backup game saves saved locally in the install folder not MyDocs, etc. "Thanks for buying Morrowind / Skyrim. However, Microsoft's new installer is so "safe" that it'll stop you installing Morrowind Graphic / Skyrim Script Extenders" / "Have you installed Doom 1-2 using MS's 'smart installer'? Sorry, you can't use any source-ports like GZDoom / Doomsday". That's really not what gamers want, not just here on GOG, but on Steam as well.

"Policies can limit the trusted sources via signing" - So with the click of a button, MS can disable the ability of games distributed via competitors to install / run installed software though not "signing" their trust-worthiness? I'm pretty sure GOG & Valve are capable of "joining the dots" there...

Then there's the issues raised by F4LL0UT. Can you extract files from installers? Do you have control over where the files are put? If not, then that's another step back. What about old games which already need installing outside of Program Files folder "because Windows 10". What about someone running a small C:\ drive SSD (Boot / System) and a larger D:\ drive 3-4TB HDD for games not actually being able to install anything on the latter "because Windows knows best"? As F4LL0UT also said, MS obsessively changes so much in W10 every bi-annual update that it's virtually guaranteed they'll start changing how MSIX works, breaking a lot of older releases. If they do it in a way that doesn't affect themselves but requires GOG to issue new offline installers of every single game, on every Windows update, they may even start to do it deliberately knowing it'll increase the competitions operating costs.

The more I read, the more it seems MSIX is a "solution looking for a problem" that benefits MS pushing the W10 store and literally no-one else. GOG / Steam games already install properly. In fact the only issues I've ever seen with broken game installers were with very old retail discs (eg, obscure cases like non-GOTY NOLF1 using 16-bit installers on 32-bit games which now fail on 64-bit OS's, or doing a version check for Windows 95-98 then getting confused with "NT 5.0", etc). But all these problems have been solved though either by GOG or modding communities simply creating new problem free 32-bit installers.

In addition to the points logically outlined by AB2012, I would simply find more palatable to use an open installer, like a 7-Zip self contained, self extracting installer for simpler games,

The problem being, that there's only a few cross platform "installers", and of those, even fewer which install for all three platforms.

You know if Microsoft didn't push the whole registry and installing DLL's in multiple locations, you'd have more of an MS-DOS installation type, or where everything is in a single directory and thus modular by default (thus delete the folder and the program/game is gone)

But it is starting to sound more like what Android has been doing for a while, where they sandbox apps. Which actually isn't that hard, just use chroot and then run the program....



Two of my gripes is the proprietary format, and if the installation files would refuse to work unless they are 'signed'.. In reality this is probably a half step towards UWP.