I got the game recently from GOC, im on windows 11 and whenever i open it i get slapped with the infamous "Sorry, cant acess direct drawers" i have downloaded the patch, watched video's, downloaded some shady patch from a papyrus website, asked a friendly youtuber called ICU (did a good playthrough, go watch his stuff) i have even used the information from Nexxus88's post where the 32 file was already a zero, a nd even still nothing happened. i am tearing my hair from my head in desperation. GOC, help me play gangsters organized crime, and my life is yours.

If you cheick out this forum, you would get that Gangsters has many problems on modern systems and GOG does not seem interested in updating it. You will just have to use some of the workarounds in this thread.
I know it can be a bitch to run, for three months, after I got a new windows 11 computer I could not get it running using the fixes in this thread, then last week someone finally posted a solution that worked.
I note that GOG only list WIndows XP and Vista as systems then promise the game will work on. Check which OS's the are listed, if they don't list the system you use don't assume the game will run on it.
IMHO GOG is a fault here selling a gme that will only run on pretty much dead Operating systems, and but it is what it is.

I know, its terrible getting it running. the thing is i used to have this game, that's how i know its good, but now that i finally have it again it wont run. your right, its crazy how they charge anything for a game you need external files and to jump through hoops to get running. i have tried all the stuff people have suggested in the threads and it still wont go, got the patch and edited the files to match and still nothing, its a disaster. just hopping either i figure it out or some Indian tech support man descends like superman to tell me how to get it running.

Try DDrawCompat by narzoul on GitHub. That's the only thing that worked for me. It's just a single file, no configuration required.

I would recommend uninstalling the game, deleting the game's folder and installing it again first to make sure none of the other things you tried are still in there.