Hello there,

I have been thinking about Gog and Windows 8 and there are two interrogations that I have:

1) GoG was created basically when Vista and 7 were released (or maybe some times before Seven but the two OSs are basically similar). What will happen when Windows 8, 9, 10... will be installed on our computers? Will we have to pay to download our previously paid games again? Will the additional work provided by the team free for those who already bought the games?

2) And concerning work? What amount of work is foreseeable to make all the games compatible with new OSs? Will most of the burden be born by DosBox and Scummvm teams?

Thanks
Gilou

There won't be much work that needs to be done unless you want to run them on an ARM processor. I don't see them bothering to add that functionality unless DosBox and ScummVM do it themselves.

Have we ever had to pay again to re-download games? I don't see why they would start requiring that now.

Win7 actually improved upon the compatibility Vista had. I don't see that trend being completely reversed in future. But graphics card drivers are another matter entirely. I think that's where the majority of GOG's problems will lie.

Actually I believe Win8 is finally going to take a huge step back in compatibility. Droping 16bit support (all 16-bit applications will have to be run inside a VM), but that shouldn't affect GOG much if at all.

That's already the case if you're using Win7 64.

True, but now it's going to be all versions. At the same time though, does it really matter? I can't think of a single 16-bit application that I ever used that wouldn't have more than enough power in a VM.

Assuming 8 is as close to 7 as 7 was to Vista I doubt it will be much of a problem. Honestly though 8 looks designed to improve areas I don't care about so far, so unlike Vista and 7 I doubt I will be upgrading immediately. Vista was exciting because XP was so old and DirectX10 might have been something (but wasn't). 7 was exciting because Vista sucked.

Why is 8 exciting? So far all I hear about is mobile stuff and Live support, neither of which I care about.

64bit OS has been offered at release for two sucessive windows OS's so it's really not an issue about 16bit support.

As long as MS doesn't act like Apple. They drop compatbility every few years.

1. GOG never made anyone pay to re-download their games after they started to add Win 7 support to them, I think you can safely assume the same will be true when Win 8, 9, 10, etc. come out as well (assuming GOG is still around by then). Making the game run on modern OSes is what we already paid GOG for anyway, so to them, adding a new OS is just a part of the service.

2. Well, in the case of the games on GOG that rely on DOSBox and ScummVM (less than half the library at last count), yes, most of the work will be done by those teams, not GOG. For any of the other games in the library, there's no real way to tell what amount of work will be required until Win 8 is available to test on. I would guess that a large number of games are going to require no work at all; the leap from Win 7 to Win 8 is not going to be that big.

As a new gogger, these questions crossed my mind too. Due to the incertainty of future compatiblity, I prefer to consider that the old games I buy today are for todays use only. I am not starting a future-proof collection because I don't know what the technology will be in 10 years.

This seems contrary to the principle behind the GoG system:
- A game DRM free so that can be installed again and again whatever happens,
- Old games that you can play on modern systems. But in 10 years, they will still be old games on modern systems

DOSBox works on 95,NT4,98,ME,2000,XP,2003.Vista,2008,7,2008R2 Windows OS's. (Mainly due to SDL)

Unless there is some massive change in compatibility in Windows 8 there shouldn't be a problem. :)

ScummVM also uses the same version of SDL as DOSBox and is just as compatible so the same applies.

I can't say I've heard anything about Windows 8 so far, so know nothing about its technical specifications.

However, I don't see it being a problem for GOG.

Firstly, the lack of 16-bit compatibility is NOT a problem for GOG at all. Why? Because all of the games on GOG are compatible with Vista 64-bit which also has no 16-bit compatibility. From this we can deduce that all of the installers are 32-bit installers and are either 32-bit games or use emulation of some kind to run the 16-bit code.

Secondly, GOG was originally for XP and Vista compatibility, but when Win7 came out they then started making the games compatible with it, so it is likely that this will continue with Windows 8.

Lastly, the GOG community is great and many people here try to help each other out in the support forums. As the game installers will run and extract the game, there is always the possibility of user-made patches or fixes to allow Win8 compatibility. However, if a game is insistent on not running in Win8, well, the machines running it might be powerful enough to run the game in an XP virtual machine.

So, all in all, sure there may be some difficulties (after all, a new OS always brings new issues) but we should be able to get through them. :)

They are adding the ribbon everywhere. => Major improvements to the whole UI. :)