Yes. And moreover, if I want guarantee, I would need to buy Win7 from Mr. Gates, right?

So, I paid once, for XP games and their storing. Now, I have to pay more, for another newer OS, and to pay even more, for some storage thingy. Excellent business they have here, these GOG guys!


EDIT: well, OK, I paid not for storing but for "having an access". But the thing I have a paid access to, changed its quality. Of course, it must be noted in EULA, that they can change anything in their part, I suppose...

Damned capitalism! Long live comandante Che! Long live the torrents and the free unselfish piracy! Long live Chinese hackers, long live Russian hackers, long live Russian president Donald Trump! Launch the rockets, colonel!

Maybe I don't understand, but my impression is this...

Installers that were once tested and confirmed as ok for XP haven't been touched. They can't be tested anymore because GOG don't have an XP system to try them on, BUT they are still the same installer. If the installer worked on XP a year ago, it will now.

I think if you look at some of the older games store pages, they still say XP compatible.

What GOG are saying is that since last summer (when Fallout 3 and New Vegas arrived) they no longer test for XP.

My point is that the old XP installers are still XP installers. Unchanged. Data sitting there waiting to be downloaded. GOG don't test them anymore, but they don't need to, having already done it once at release time.

Do I have it wrong?

As someone with an XP system (I now also have a Win7 system), I waited quietly and patiently for Fallout 3 and NV to get here. On the very same day they arrived GOG stopped supporting XP, and changed the NV installer so it wouldn't run on XP. I was disappointed. I still have the XP system, and would like to think that any older games I have yet to download will run on it.

Indeed. it is much better to force gOg to have systems for 0.2% of the customers base which make them bleed monies instead. So when gOg folds, non of us can use it anymore, not only those insisting on XP. one for all and all for one!

They just say they don't break it intentionally. But with the growing amount of Win8-10 users they may try to tune up something in those old installers for the better compatibility with newer systems. And that's exactly what I'm talking about.
I bought these games in times XP was supported, and bought 'em to run on XP. And as I already said, I think it's not such a big "inconvenience" for a big company to keep XP-friendly installation copies intact. They need NO testing, NO maintaining, they just need a not so big storage volume.

What I really don't understand is why you don't just simply backup your games. Many GOGers do this anyway. As it has been said you don't pay for storage anyway but for access. Afaik it is not even part of the contract that you get lifelong access granted. So you pay and you can download and backup your game and secure it from any other probably XP breaking updates. You were talking about the games GOG guaranteed XP functionality for and only for them. It should not be that much work to backup those. I have two external 1TB HDDs for my backups and nobody but me will touch them. I will update them in case I am satisfied with the update GOG provided and only then. If GOG should go out of business for whatver reason (a thing I don't hope will happen) I still have my games safe.

He said it clearly - he has around 500 games, and sees no reason why he MUST spend his own storage when everything is supposedly available on-line, such as with torrents and whatnot.
Though he now understands, Gog keeping the same XP-Supported installers accessible even post support for said os,
isn't part of the service he payed for, It was still a main reason he purchased here in the first place (oppose to torrent).

I get him completely. I also have an old XP system, which isn't offline. I hoped Gog will always have games for it.
I also have an old win 2000 with dual boot win 98, and in the win 98 load menu it offers me to revert back to a completely working dos 6.22 with Dos Navigator. It even has a network card, but mostly cannot connect due to issues. Even though some Gog games should work better on this system, Gog never supported it, which was quite a shock for me at the time - until I realized my expectations of Gog always keeping original files with the games they are selling are unrealistic - when their main premise is making them work on Supported Systems. But hey, if all I need is unaltered files, they should be accessible on some archive, right?
Either way, I'm not about to spend who know how much of my local storage to keep games I bought just]to ensure they still work on my win 2000 / 98 / Dos 6.22 system, and same for Win Xp. I do hope most of their licenses allow using "alternate means" to get them once I realize the Gog hosted versions are incompatible.

I also found this thread through search, maybe if Gog provided this, it will be easier to host specific files for every system available (with no backwards support for newer additions in old installers from previously supported oses)

And what is also very frustrating - GOG keeps to misinform and mislead us about minimum specs required.

I look at, say, Titan Quest Anniversary Edition or Grim Dawn, and I see "Win7 minimum", while Steam and - what is more important and trustworthy - official sites give me WinXP as minimum requirement.

Zombasite is shown as game that will run even on Win98 on Soldak official site! (these guys are known for making good-looking and good-playing games with very low specs). So what do we see on GOG Zombasite page? Win7, of course.

So recently I got a habit to mistrust GOG game specifications and check it somewhere else. Another HUGE minus on GOG account for me.

But it seems, GOG with its (relatively) new governance looks to attract more modern, more casual and younger players. Well, who would mourn the loss of another solitary old-school grumbler when the business perspectives look so bright for now, right?

This will happen. Could be worse, on Steam when you fail to upgrade your OS, you will be locked out of the client, and loose access to your whole library. As others said Terabyte Drives, and backups of backups. Be your own cloud

The thing is, as much as some people hate Steam, one of the big benefits it has is, that the games don't really need installers whereas GOG games do, especially if you are not willing to use Galaxy. From a compatibility point of view, it's far simpler and definitely cheaper, to do things if there's only one piece of software you need to take care of.

Minimum specs are not minimum specs required, they are minimum specs supported. If you run Zombasite on Win98 and encounter an issue, Soldak would have to provide you with support to get the game running, while GOG would not, since GOG tells you the game is supported on Win7 and higher.
Same reason why a ton of indie games list 4GB RAM as minimum, even if you could run it on a potato. The developers will not support it on anything lower, quite likely because they do not have access to a lower spec machine.

So why should I buy a car if I could steal it ... imo torrents are no alternative to GOG simply because they are illegal (at least for such cases) but each to his own.

So it's GOG's problem that he does not read what he signed up for?

Or worst case you can find torrents for the older versions...

Why would someone not want to use Galaxy but see benefits in using Steam? THE reason to not use Galaxy IS wanting to use standalone installers.
Compatibility has nothing to do with Client Software. Do you actually think that just any game will work fine on your system just because it's distributed by Steam?

Hmmm... not sure.

I utterly despise the idea i can't install the game/software on another computer unless tethered to some external entity, requiring online connectivity.

I also Despise DRM. So.... yeah...

Well you do realize it is a rant, right?
He never said Gog is wrong here, He just said he assumed Gog will cater to his needs, and now realizes it doesn't 100% follow them, and disappointed he trusted they do (even though didn't read* to ensure 100% before purchasing).

Regarding stealing, he does not wish to resort to stealing, but when there is no other way to legitimately get what you need - as no one actually offers it for sale, what are you suppose to do? Digital theft is still a victimless crime.
Changing your needs to suit the available merchandise is hardly a viable solution. Again, you said some licenses permit obtaining the software through alternative means of distribution - I do hope these games of mine who are not or will not be compatible with my respected system due to fluctuations in Gog's decisions on versions to host, have such licenses so using these alternative means will be legal in this regard.

* And to be fair on this regard, no one actually reads every Eula before purchasing.
He joined on Jan 2013, when Gog's premise was still Good Old Games, and could only assume this means that for the least part, their OLD games that predate 2013, will always remain 100% compatible to anything compatible at the time. He never asked for them to be updated with new features or bug fixes post 2013, Or having a Galaxy client for WinXp, Not even keeping the downloader compatible (like many are still hoping for) - Just for the main executable to still work on the same system it worked when he purchased it - and he assumed that if by any chance an update will break compatibility, that another version** of the executable will still be available for WinXp without that update.
Suppose Gog support does keep a backup which it can provide at any point (and such archival storage is very negligible for Gog, so there is no reason why they shouldn't keep it), there should be no reason why support can't just say they can provide such upon request and be done for.
** The only thing Gog needs to have that option is keep a VM image with Win XP, and each time a new installer is published, start that VM and try to run it once through that Win Xp image. This can easily be automatic and cost them virtually nothing. I'm a DevOps and can setup such a system from scratch in under a day's work in Amazon Cloud so it can be available worldwide, But I don't have access to every executable Gog makes available... It should better be done at their Headquarters or main Storage location.