So..
- an user bought a game marked as compatible with his OS.
- afterwards, the store updated the game package with an optional component, breaking the compatibility.
- the game stopped working on such OS.
- basically.. the store sold you a non-working game?

Is such a thing legal? O_o

P.s: before, I posted this question wrongly here

I'll post the same exact reply:
Certainly is. Even F/OSS programs and operating systems drop support for old things. I certainly don't expect a program to work on Fedora Core these days, and nobody bats an eye when PPC support drops. And many programs are starting to drop 32-bit support. Fedora 24 for example is heading towards EOL, and after that, it's upgrade or nothing.

Why.. this was for other people who are only following this thread.
We can't transfer\copy all the same posts here.
I've already replied to you over there.

Don't know, I wasn't using Linux 20 years ago.

I can tell you from my experience at university with Red Hat that distros around the turn of the millenium were probably very meh in terms of user experience.

However, currently, many distros are very usable and this is coming from an ex-Windows user.

I recommend you to try Deepin OS or Manjaro Linux. Both are really great Linux distributions that gives Linux that Modern Windows 10/Mac OS feeling. Their UIs are very elegant. For me they look like a MIx between Windows 10 and Mac OS.

People are schooled to think like you do, but such thinking has no basis in science. For starters, centralized banking systems mean centralized economic authority, and that isn't capitalism. The major premise of capitalism is that economic authority should, by and large, be decentralized, because local people are the best judge of what works in their locality, having the most accurate and up-to-date economic data.

The American socio-economic system can best be described as welfare socialism, corporate socialism, or crony capitalism. Thanks to the Federal Reserve System, we've seen consolidation on a scale that is far beyond extreme, leaving us with corporate entities that are far worse than the monarchies that existed back in Adam Smith's day, when mercantilism held sway.

The problem with capitalism is much the same as the problem with democracy: it is essentially an honor system and can only function properly when virtue holds sway, because it is very easily corrupted --- and the Federal Reserve System is a perfect example of this, introducing moral hazard to such an extent that the global financial system is comprised of compulsive gamblers.

Corruption is every bit as deadly as the Black Plague, but rather than physical degeneration, it produces psycho-spiritual degeneration that invariably leads to self-destruction.

I have to ask: why is it going to cost a lot of money? It's a simple matter of "Here they are. These worked previously in XP but we've had to cut the cord on providing official support for this game running under the older OS. Please check out the game subforum if you have problems with the game."

Providing servers to download them cost them money...

They probably don't have anything to actually test or confirm what does or doesn't work on XP at this juncture, and that would still require work on their part.

Plus unless they focus specifically on XP, their storage demands could potentially go through the roof if they need full-fledged offline installers for every single version of their 1000+ games.

Just one more reason why GOG's decision to infect the OFFline installers with it's Galaxy™ malware blows chunks. o.O

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll bookmark both of them and test them out sometime in the future.

Assign the task to a bunch of developers for a couple of months and they'll probably end up with a great solution that takes everything into account.

99% of old versions of games wouldn't actively be downloaded, so it would probably be fine for GOG to store those version in cold storage archives. Then they could probably use delta patches between versions of the games and files and basically set up an automated process to retrieve and prepare a specific version of the game that a user requests.

This would obviously have a higher response time in being able to serve a certain version of the content for users (probably a couple of hours or even days for least requested data), but the costs wouldn't actually be as high as you'd expect.

Look at the website and the state of Galaxy and tell me truthfully whether you think they have the developers to spare.

But he said: So there aren't going to be that many; even if there were, those customers would instead be downloading versions that no longer function under XP - and then pestering Support for help. The number of downloads wouldn't change. The company has told us from the get-go that customers will be able to download their games as often as they want:

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212184749-Can-I-re-download-my-purchased-items- They've essentially positioned themselves as cloud storage for our libraries, and have known all along they'll need to pay for server traffic.

For me, anyway, I think it's reasonable that gOg don't put more effort effort into those titles. It shouldn't be necessary anyway: the work was done already, and the OS in question isn't changing. Support can say "We no longer offer support for games operating under the following OSes, but you can get the last known-good version of game XYZ here: <link>." At that point further problems are on the customer's side: they got it working well under XP, and the game didn't change and the OS no longer changes, so any problems are most likely caused by something the customer did.

As for storage of the installers, is it really that much? Can anyone with nearly the entire library chime in on how much hard drive space is taken up? 10 TB? I know they'll need multiple copies to handle the potential load but that is mitigated by decreasing the load on Support.

Anyway, I don't see how it's going to cost much to provide access to the last version that is already massaged for XP and is not Galaxy-fied. And they can offset that by saying they are no longer able to provide support for games running under whichever old OS.

If we see a lot of previously-good installers getting messed up for old OSes with the addition of Galaxy-necessary integration (we get it: Galaxy is their future), I'd like to see that they keep the last known-good versions available. It's a customer-friendly move that shouldn't cost much if anything: they would no longer need to develop new solutions for those games under XP, and can drop all but the most basic support for those games under the old OSes.

Why do you keep bringing up free software dropping support for something? How is this relevant? If some free software i use drops support for something i need, i can still compile and use the old version, or fork it, or set up some local patches for the new version that restore compatibility. All this is impossible if everything we have is a proprietary binary licensed with crippling EULA.