That reminds me: is there some wiki page of GOG games which do not work at all in Windows 8, with possible workarounds?

Such list would be helpful, but it should include only games which pretty much everyone has problems with. Many times when people think the problem is with the OS, it might be something else, like different graphics card drivers, missing runtime libraries etc.

At the moment, at least Haegemonia Gold should probably be in that list. Maybe it would also kick GOG to try to fix it (or GOG could clearly state "Nope, can't be done, sorry."). If a game is proven to have serious issues with Win8, it should be clearly stated in the gamecard, as currently people are not sure if the lack of "Windows 8" in the gamecard means that it will not work, or that GOG just hasn't tested it yet, or that there are some minor issues that only some people see in Windows 8.

The fix process described in the Will not run on Windows 8 topic Elenarie linked to indicates that GOG's compatibility overrides are introducing new problems on Windows 8 (hence why the uninstallation workaround fixes the game). I don't have this game to test but if that's what's happening you could use regshot or the like to track the changes made by the installer and then reverse just the troublesome changes without breaking the CD key check in the process.

As for a list of broken games I don't think there is one yet. It's also important to be sure that the problem is not limited to the reporting user's system before stating that as a fact on a wiki list or the like since some percentage of issues are due to configuration specifics of the particular user's system rather than an issue inherent to the OS itself (e.g. videos in some games will have problems if bad codec packs are installed but this cause isn't immediately obvious).

Yeah I agree, it is too easy to blame e.g. the OS. The only way to assume it is the OS if pretty much everyone seems to be unable to run the game in the given OS. And even that is still an (good) assumption, if the root cause is not known.

Like I was before ready to say that the graphical glitch in GTA3 is a Windows 8 problem (since I see it only in Win8)... but then I didn't see the issue widely reported by other Win8 users, and one who did report the same problem, was in fact running Win7.

Your suggestion of regshot might be good, maybe I'll try it. Too bad though that I already installed and uninstalled the game in Win8, so there is no sure way knowing if the second installation starts from the original state? I don't feel like reverting back to some earlier recovery point.

Have seen that happen on XP too, a long time ago when I was playing the game in a gaming club / computer studio / whatever you call those places.

Process Monitor is another great tool that you can track access and changes to the Registry in real time. However, you'll have to specifically know what you're after, but its not that hard to understand the workflow.

Anyways, related to what I quoted... Inspect the Registry in HKEY CURRENT USER -> Software, HKEY LOCAL MACHINE -> SOFWARE, and HKEY LOCAL MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Wow6432Node. Pretty sure that the game has some leftovers there.

I don't own that one specifically, so can't test to resolve the issue and make a working package myself.

Mavericks does feature some snazzy improvements but they still haven't fixed 'save as.'

The GOG uninstaller cleans up its own files and keys which seems to be what matters for this workaround. The user described this workaround working without having to return to a clean state before the game was ever installed.

Good point, if there are any remnants there, they shouldn't matter in this case.

Gamers buy Windows 8?