Well to be fair a correctly created software for windows should be installed precisely there.

A pretend one - on a diffferent drive - *shrug* old habits die hard.
Actually - not necessarily. Roaoming profiles, "this user" or "all users", "advertised shortcuts" ... its a bit of a shambles really.

Blackwell does, for one.
No idea why that's funny.

Great news: The new installers do! =D
Sorry, I just assumed it was a joke since it was one of the most ridiculous assertions I've read in the past 6 months.

I dont like the new installer also - its because i installed most of my GOG.COM games in the folder F:\GOG.COM .
This worked perfectly for so many games, but i also had some installers, which didnt allow me to install there, so now i have a second folder F:\GOGCOM ._.'

On the one side its a nice idea, that they dont ppl to confront with the problems that can happen, when you install to the default path (the progam files one),
But on the other side, it also restricts ppl, who are aware of that fact.

Because it's slightly easier, not to mention a lot more legal, to manually extract an InnoSetup package than to remove a DRM system?

No, some programs should go in Program Files, userland programs clearly don't belong there and there's even permissions issues with it. Userland apps != system level apps. If they don't need privs, they shouldn't live in the system Program Files directory.

I wouldn't be so sure about that being more legal....

No every program should go to program files as default. If there are problems with permissions then it is because it violates the standard that settings and stuff should not be written to program files but to either my documents or app data. This standard however really only was established with windows XP and Vista was the first OS that enforced it with its UAC. Because a lot of games on Gog don't fulfill this standard installing to program files is not a good idea for them. In theory Windows should move these files they try to write to a virtual program files folder in app data but it doesn't work always.

That of course depends on the legislation in your area, but it definitely applies to the US (see DMCA) and to the EU (see Directive 2001/29/EC). If you know something I don't, do share. :)

Just out of curiousity, has anyone established what the illegal characters are? Is it simply that someone has set the installer to only accept alphanumeric characters (and space)?

I'm pretty sure GOG would test before the release that you can at least install the GOG game and that it works. :)

Even if a game works fine under Program Files (GOG or otherwise), I still install it somewhere else like C:/Games/, just in case I want to mod it or something that involves changing or replacing some of the game files manually myself. Heck, I have installed even Steam outside Program Files.

Then again, the heck I know how future Windows versions will treat apps and games installed outside the default location, e.g. Program Files. Maybe in some future Windows revision you won't be able to install even legacy apps/games outside Program Files, for "security reasons".

Can you give me a couple of examples of games that exhibit this behaviour? I tried Duke3D (installer version 2.0.0.84) and it accepted "\Program Files (x86)" happily.

'Fraid not. I haven't encountered it. I think some of the newer packaged games have it, someone else will need to point you to it. I was just curious as to what has actually been done. My money is still on mistake rather than deliberate prevention.

My biggest grievance too, pisses me off that I have to search through hidden folders to find my save games. It's not like it would be difficult to dump everything into one universal folder. You would have thought that given windows, age, dominance, power etc, they would be a bit more organised with their shite.