Dear GOG Team,

I'm writing this letter as a long-time customer and fan of your platform. For years, I've deeply appreciated GOG's unique approach — offering DRM-free games, treating users with respect, and supporting the concept of true digital ownership. These values have always set GOG apart, and that’s why so many of us trust and support you.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed a trend that is quite concerning — one that I believe calls for open discussion. More and more titles in your store, which once ran perfectly well on older systems like Windows 7, are now listed as only compatible with Windows 10 or Windows 11. In some cases, updates appear to overwrite previous versions that worked on those older systems, making them unavailable to download even for users who purchased the game when it was originally compatible. The result? Players lose access to something they paid for — not due to classic DRM, but due to system requirements and versioning changes.

In practice, this kind of shift may function as a form of indirect DRM. While users still "own" their games, they may no longer be able to install or play them on the systems they originally used. With the end of Windows 10 support on the horizon, this issue may become even more pressing, as many new builds could soon be limited to Windows 11 only. For users like me — and many others who, for various reasons, have no intention of switching to Windows 11 — this creates a barrier to access content we've legally purchased.

I fully understand that you're not expected to support every OS version indefinitely. That’s not what I’m asking for. The request is simple: please allow users to download older builds — the ones that were available and functional at the time of purchase. For those running older hardware, retro setups, Windows 7, or Linux (where older builds often work better under compatibility layers), this can make all the difference.

I would like to suggest a practical solution that would cost little but mean a great deal: add an option to download legacy versions of a game directly from our GOG library — clearly marked as "unsupported" if necessary. These files already exist on your servers. And since the user paid for the game, it seems only fair that they should have access to the version they originally received.

Steam, despite using DRM, still allows many titles to be launched on older systems. But GOG has always gone further — and this is precisely why you should lead by example. My intention here is not to accuse, but to start a thoughtful conversation and encourage a solution before the issue grows. I firmly believe that many users will support this initiative — and I also believe that within GOG, there are people who share this concern.

To fellow GOG users reading this — please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences. Together, we can help ensure that GOG’s ideals — freedom, transparency, and respect for the customer — continue to thrive, even as the market evolves.

With sincere respect and hope for a positive response,
Skrzeczek

A system not being listed on the store page does not mean the game won't run there. With Windows 7, it was mostly the 32-bit version that faced incompatibility issues. Pretty much everything still works fine on 64-bit Win 7.

And there isn't going to be a major shift like 32->64 bit in the future any time soon. GOG will most likely remove Win 10 from the supported OS list, as they did with 7, but in practice, basically nothing will change.

With that said, the ability to download legacy versions would be greatly welcome anyway. If only to be able to get to versions before some major updates. Saints Row IV for example. The Galaxy rollback can go back up to 5 versions, but it's no installer. And if a game gets updated often, 5 is not enough anyway. Though offering every single version is not really an option (feel free to pay for the storage costs :P). But keeping important milestone versions? Definitely doable.

I would say that the only "protection" and "guarantee" that Gog gives you is that, once you download a game you purchased, the game on your HD cannot be disabled / removed / changed without you knowing and.... that's it.

They don't really offer any guarantee that the game will never be altered, removed (never happen yet but technically if they are legally forced to, it could happen) or that the game will continue working on its original OS or even on older, no longer supported, OSes.

That's the good and bad thing with DRM-free store, on one site it put control back into your hands, as in you can do a backup at any time, but on the other side if you don't take advantage of this possibility and don't backup your games then it is not really any different than Steam or any other digital store.

No, not really. On the flipside, it completely unplugs support for older systems and it has done so for Windows XP and Windows 7 - all on the whims of Google since their launcher is yet another Chromium instance running on your computer.

I think some of you who ask for older versions of games to be available and downloadable (from the website and not Galaxy I'd assume) might not realize that GOG just might not have the capacity needed to store older versions of games on top of existing ones. Let's think about it, maybs?

Shadow of Was is like over a 100GBs. Yet GOG presumably has to keep two copies of its files: the installers and the files served to Galaxy users when they click the install button. That's 200GBs for just one game that I'm not sure received an update here or not.

For a game with updates, I'd rightfully assume they'd want to save space and so the older versions that they keep is as I recall up to the last 5 versions in Galaxy, and are only served through there. Presumably that's so they don't have to keep unchanged files between versions, and also to not package 5 different builds of the same game as offline installers. All this content eventually adds up and would need more infrastructure.

Although the names escape me, there are some utilities you can use to obtain these older versions without Galaxy. Like this one explained here, though the caveat is some builds may not be available if they're Gen 1 Galaxy.

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It's just like Gersen explained up there eloquently, GOG's selling point is that when you download the game, neither they nor the devpubs have the power to do anything with your game without your permission, the game is DRM-free and you get to decide if it's updated or stays on an older version, you're in control, and that's what's great about GOG. With Epic Launcher and its clones, I feel like I own nothing and somehow they have this expectation that I must be happy about it.

Thank you for this objective criticism! Sometimes I wish all forum members would express their dissatisfaction this way.

Otherwise, I think the suggestion is desirable. For fear of a newer version being incompatible with my older PCs, I always save my offline installers locally on multiple hard drives.

I hope GOG will see reason and make all versions available for download as offline installers in the future.

Windows 7 is now a dead and unsupported operating system, and I find it odd to expect a store to support obsolete platforms, just as I wouldn’t expect them to support Windows 3.0, Windows 95, or even Amiga OS 3.1.

GOG’s core mission has always been to make classic games playable on modern systems, not to make games available for systems that are no longer maintained.

He wrote:

"I fully understand that you're not expected to support every OS version indefinitely. That’s not what I’m asking for."

and

"clearly marked as "unsupported" if necessary."

According to statistics, Windows 7 users may now be a minority online, but nobody knows what the situation is with offline gaming PCs that are still active.

That would be an additional cost for GOG. If you want to back up software to ensure it works on your outdated OS, that’s your prerogative, but it’s something you should have done while it was still supported. You can’t expect GOG to function as an online storage solution for every operating system as they become obsolete.

Again, if you choose to use an outdated OS, it’s your responsibility to ensure you have the compatible software or to find a way to make the software you acquire work on that system. I have about 3500 Amiga games that I keep backed up and stored safely. That is my responiblity, noone elses.

There are places and people, there are always places and people.
But.... it would be nice or acceptable to be able to access XP installer and Win7/10 installer forever after here, on gog com or on GOG, and not from places and people.

All games I play work on Win10 and XP.... but I play on three machines to skip compatibility issues : )

Skrzeczek, I think "they" are forcing us without hesitation to upgrade machines and systems as you think.
More to say, I think it is a worldwide agenda, and people on classic machines are entitled to protest peacefully yet firmly.
Found my chance in DVDs/CDs for XP, and securing installers for win10.
Also, once a game is installed and the computer secured..... nothing happens! It constantly works better than the video game console ' )

Summing up. +1 for XP installers for timed games.
And +1 for Offline Installers in general.
+1 for Win10 64bit forever installers.
and +1, surprisingly, for making ol' games preserved.
We edit.

Generally speaking, that's true, but I understand that there are people still using older systems who would like to play the old games. GOG has to decide how high the demand actually is and whether it can afford to lose these customers. I can well imagine that new customers will still come to GOG who haven't played in a while, want to dust off their old consoles, and buy games from the past for their old computers.

Nicely and very reasonably worded, good to see this put in this manner.

Kind of a lousy example when those games didn't really receive many patches if at all and I would assume that you didn't test them all on every Kickstart version, whereas trying to backup every relevant version for each GOG game is going to either take far too much time to verify which older versions can be safely replaced with their successor, or too much disk space because every update for each game must be backed up for who knows how long it takes for a customer to naturally end up playing each of those games and then perhaps be able to far more efficiently wipe out most of the older versions of that game just by googling first if someone else has already listed which versions could be considered more relevant than others.

In another words, it could easily be more beneficial for not only such customers, but also to GOG itself, if these relevant older versions would remain available as unsupported installers, because:

1. Less backup capacity needed means more money left to buy games from GOG
2. No need to leave a download script running 24/7 anymore just to ensure that those relevant older versions get downloaded, because they could now be downloaded at anyone's own pace, meaning less overall bandwidth spent and thus less expenses for GOG
3. As a bonus, now even new customers would have access to all of these old, but still relevant versions for any game as long as they are able to buy them before they get pulled from the store, which could guarantee a steady flow of new customers to GOG once every retro gaming oriented channel starts to mention that there is now a legit way to easily obtain these older versions of games they are showcasing to their viewers

While there might not be a significant enough amount of customers hoarding all the updates for GOG to consider it worthwhile do anything about this, anyone here who isn't only interested about gazing their own navel, should at least agree that access to older versions would make new customers more equal to the rest of us, as they obviously can't have started to download any offline installers from here before they have found this place in the first place.

Nor does Windows 7 games, because... Windows 7 is now a dead OS. That is what the thread is all about. Windows 7 is now in the same category as my Amiga games.

Not now, but I did have to before. Now I got them all saved with the corect configuration to work correctly. The same you need to do if you insist on using a dead OS.

That was a process I had to go through when I built up my Amiga archive. If you insist on doing the same for your dead OS (Windows 7) then that is part of the price you pay to do so. You also do not need to do it alone, just get together likeminded people and do some each.

Bottom line, and the reason I’m ignoring the rest of the post, is this: if you insist on using a dead OS, then the responsibility that comes with it is entirely yours. If you're not willing to put in that work, then upgrade to a modern, supported operating system. For example, I have three gaming computers: a decent gaming PC running Windows 11 for all recent games (plus an Amiga emulator :)), an old laptop running Windows XP, and my original Amiga 1200, which still works. But the only system I expect support for is the Windows 11 machine. I fully understand that making anything run on the others is entirely up to me.

1a) DRM free games with several annoying exceptions.
1b) Treating users with respect? After their various social media faux pas and childish campaigns, I'm not sure I'm going to take the rest of this open letter with much veracity.
1c) Digital licences, of which can be taken away.

2) Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended 10 years ago. Sorry that time is a tolling march. Why not ignore that and just use an operating system that can run them anyway; like Linux?

3) The games are still there, they can still be downloaded, they just don't run on OS/2 3. You've lost nothing but comparability with an ancient OS.

4) None of which were and never have been part of GOG's ethos. Typically it was assumed that if you had the retro rig to run it, you were willing to run though the pains of running it.

5) Do they? Feels like it'd make VCS a bit of a pain to manage to have to juggle obsolete builds for a niche audience.

6) What are you on about? This article specifically states they cut support for Windows 7 and earlier last year.

7) Frankly, I don't think supporting Windows longterm would be in my cards. But that's me. It's clear that Microsoft is aiming to make Windows a SAAS platform, and that frankly would be an annoying thing to support.

That makes perfect sense because GOG's business is to offer games that run on modern systems and OSes, not on abandoned OSes and systems that were discontinued already years or decades ago.

If you want to keep older GOG installers around, download them when they are available, and keep them in some safe place.