I think you're mixing up problems and coming up with incorrect solutions.

[url=http://www.an-ovel.com/cgi-bin/magog.cgi?ver=953&scp=gdspurioc&dsp=io&ord=&flt=oal~w10~onn~w07~]There are currently only 11 games that are listed as supported for Windows 10 and not supported for Windows 7[/url]
Weirdly enough, they're all supported for XP and Vista. I'm sure they'll work on 7.

The games you mention are supported for Windows 7.
I have Windows 7. I'll venture a guess that the vast majority of gog users have Windows 7.
I've never had a problem with running a game on my machine (I'd check DK2 right now, but I'm currently booted in linux).

So your proposed solution of "gog should provide the original game files!" makes no sense. It doesn't follow from the problem you stated. You say that you have too many games not working to ask for their support individually, but if they're all different problems, and they all work for other people (who are on Windows 7), I don't think the problem is a lack of the original files.

What I mean is the retail version of the game with the most recent official patch from the publisher. The DRM-free installer package would be the same as what GOG offers now, just without any compatibility patches, settings, or other alterations that GOG themselves have made in order for the games to run on modern versions of Windows.

See my post above regarding the older versions of games that are available on Steam. Virtually no one asks for support for those because the procedure to download them is not publicized and only rarely used by anyone. There is no reason to expect the situation would be different on GOG. The only people who would bother downloading older versions of a game are those that actually need them for the games to work properly.

Okay... So I guess that explains why the GOG version DK2 no longer works. That's one mystery solved. Of course, it could still work even on my up-to-date Nvidia driver if GOG offered the original version of the game, because that version of DK2 runs perfectly fine with the dgVoodoo wrapper. The GOG version does not work with dgVoodoo at all.

It might work on my Windows XP machine but there's no reason for me to bother with it, because the retail version that I downloaded elsewhere earlier today runs fine on Windows 7. The pirated version works better than the GOG version, which I wish was not the case, but it is.

Well you've already discovered why the GOG version doesn't work - because it is broken when using up-to-date Nvidia drivers. I have no idea why you think I would be lying about this, but try the retail 1.7 version of DK2 with the dgVoodoo wrapper copied to the game directory and see for yourself.

ok, just thought it was worth checking. as much as I don't like Galaxy, the ability to check out previous versions can be quite handy. Unfortunately we don't have the same thing for the offline installers.

it's easy to point to dgVoodoo2 now, but when DK2 was released here and GOG had to develop some way to make it run on a modern OS dgVoodoo2 didn't exist yet. (DK2 was released here in 2011, dgVoodoo2 in 2013)
The other thing is that dgVoodoo2 only supports Windows Vista/7/8/10. So as long as GOG still supported Windows XP, that wasn't really an option that they could ship for everybody.
That being said, given that GOG now even has some kind of partnership with dgVoodoo I certainly would have expected some games to be updated to use that wrapper. (but maybe I only own the wrong games and they already do that ??)

And if you scroll around somewhat in the DungeonKeeper forum you'll find that the GOG version actually does seem to work quite decently for a lot of people. So it's kinda hard to accept your claim that GOG is making unnecessary changes to just break the game on WIndows 7.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe you that the game is having issues on your PC. GOG's fixes are rarely perfect enough to work 100%. But you argument that GOG's custom changes are unnecessary and just distributing the retail version would be better is just flat-out wrong in my experience.

I don't know exactly what games you own on GOG, but if I were able to see your list I'm sure I could find at least one that would demonstrate some of the problems I've encountered.

The problems I'm talking about do not involve getting games to "run." Dungeon Keeper 2 is the first GOG game I can remember encounting that doesn't even reach the menu screen. The problems are that the games have audio and visual glitches that most people don't care about, but which bother the hell out of me. Playing a game with constant audio popping and crackling and lag (a very common issue caused by GOG's forced compatibility settings) is a terrible way to play these games. And I guess it sucks for me if GOG doesn't fix them because not enough people care about those problems, but the end result is that the retail copy with Dege's wrapper is far superior to what GOG offers.

While this will not "fix" your game, I just tried the latest GOG version of DK2. I used the standalone offline installer, I don't use GOG Galaxy at all at the moment.

It worked perfectly for me as far as I could tell. I run the normal (non-safe mode) version.

- The launcher + the opening logo screen are fine,

- The intro video is not stretched, it it shown correctly in 4:3, meaning black bars on both sides of the screen. If the video is streched for you, the culprit is probably a wrong setting in your graphics driver's options (should have "aspect correction" enabled or somesuch).

- Playing the first level a bit, everything seems fine. Graphics are correctly in 4:3 mode, audio is coming from both channels, game is not running in some sort of speedy mode etc.

My configuration:

Windows 7/64bit Home
ASUS G75VW gaming laptop
NVidia Geforce GTX 670M (driver version 391.35, so the game works also with newer NVidia drivers)
8GB RAM
Dell keyboard with a rotating audio knob.
A noname mouse which has two buttons and a third wheel button.
Creative Labs something something audio speakers (analog).
An external USB DWD.RW driver, brand unknown.
An old Toyota Auris automobile, still works fine.
An apartment with three bedrooms and two toilets, and a bathtub which is nice.
An above-average looking wife, still hot IMHO.

I wish I had not speculated that GOG is intentionally making games run poorly on older versions of Windows. Stupid statement on my part. I will edit that out.

But of course I accept that GOG's custom changes are necessary for most people - those users who don't want or don't know how to bother with graphics/sound wrappers, WineVDM, Nvidia Inspector, or any other of the dozens of potential solutions that are now available to get older games running properly. I just want to have a fallback option available - the original version of the game without GOG's changes. Because if we have that then we don't ever need to worry about GOG continually making changes to their games and wondering whether the next update they make will be the one that breaks something.

About 120 of my 300 games on gog were released pre-2000. But listing them out is not going to do any good, because I'd then have to install them and be on the lookout for lag, which I've ever experienced, or crackling audio, which I've also never heard, although I have heard that to help with file-size gog downgraded audio in some of the games (not sure how true that is) but you may just as well say I'm not as discerning as you probably are.

Again, "Provide the original game files" still doesn't make sense as a solution to your problem. Those original game files would not work without the changes that have been done, so the only reason to have them in the first place is some sort of classical games archival endeavour, which is noble and all, but doesn't fall within gog's goals.

But that would be the physical CD retail version of the game (coming on two CDs if I recall correctly?). GOG doesn't deliver physical CD games.

If you mean GOG should provide ISO images of the original CDs, those would not work because of the copy protection. You would have to find some kind of noCD crack for the game.

If you mean some kind of 1:1 CloneCD image, that probably wouldn't work either as nowadays both Windows 7 (as well as 10) don't work with many kinds of older popular copy protection methods, as Microsoft has marked them as malware.

You are mixing up things. As far as I know, GOG Galaxy has the same feature, letting you to download older versions of games, the same as Steam.

However, Steam does not provide "the original old game files from the publisher" either for their older classic games. Same as GOG.

Not really. I just tested the game with the latest NVidia drivers, and it works fine. So that remark seems to be obsolete now, it was possibly an issue at some point when new NVidia drivers broke backwards-compatibility with many games (also non-GOG games), but apparently NVidia has later fixed it. Or, GOG fixed the issue, but forgot to remove the remark from the store page.

No, the remark was obsolete. The Dungeon Keeper 2 GOG version is running perfectly for everyone else but you because your PC is broken and your Windows configuration is completely hosed. And your mother dresses you funny.

I bet that if you sorted your PC problems out, all those GOG games that you say are now broken for you would magically start running again, poof! Yes, even on your Windows 7 PC, no need to upgrade to Windows 10.

I'm not asking for the original versions because I want GOG to act like a games museum. I want them so I can make the games run properly using tools that offer a superior solution than what GOG is doing.

If you really believe I've been lying throughout this whole thread for the past several hours just to waste some free time during my weekend, claiming that GOG's game versions have problems that the original versions don't, well then there's not much else I could do to convince you otherwise.

I don't believe you're lying, I'm sure you are having problems with your games.
All I've been saying is that "Provide the original files" isn't a solution for that. Since there isn't a blanket issue with all the old games, the solution is the one you don't want to tackle: Each game has its own individual problem, and while it is possible that you fix the problem here (you didn't appear to be sure about what it was, initially, so I'm pretty sure even if you had the original files, you'd likely run into more problems, and then you'd be asking gog support for help on extra files they had provided which they don't support) with having access to original game files, the solution to every game is not going to be that.

You are making this sound way more complicated than it is:

- Publisher delivers game data to GOG, plus the latest official patch, minus the copy protection.
- GOG packages the game data and replaces the game's native installer with the GOG installer.
- GOG alters/patches the game's executable to make the game compatible with modern Windows.
- GOG uploads the package to their servers.

That is how GOG issues games right now. I'm asking for them to remove step 3 and make that package available as an additional, optional download. Not complicated.

That is false, at least for the older games I've checked on Steam. Jedi Knight, for example, can be downloaded from Steam in it's original, unmodified release. It even includes the old Microsoft Zone multiplayer client executable just as it was on the original game disc.

And in fact, I needed to download this version of the game to play it last week, because Disney very recently added a patch to the game to fix music playback on Windows 10... which ended up breaking music playback on Windows 7.

I'm sure there are some old games on Steam where the original game data is not available at all. But in those cases, it would be because the publisher never gave Steam the data in the first place. For similar situations with GOG, I would only expect them to offer whatever the publisher provides. If GOG doesn't receive the unmodified data, then they obviously couldn't make it available to GOG customers.

Mystery restored!

Of course. Everything on GOG works perfectly. My mistake.

I can understand the consideration you're trying to make, but I feel that what you seek may not be ethically possible, as I'm sure you know.

I've already stated that the retail version of Dungeon Keeper 2 works on my PC, when used with the dgVoodoo wrapper. So... yes, the original files are what fixed the problem. I don't know why the GOG version crashes. I do know that the retail version works.

I've also already stated that if GOG makes the original game versions available, I would expect them to offer no support for them. In 10 years and 800 games purchased on GOG, I've filed a grand total of two support requests, the most recent of which was over half a decade ago. I don't need support in getting games to run, as long as I am able to use the resources and tools that are available to me. GOG's modifications are preventing me from doing that.

That's how it ideally goes. In many cases, that's not the case.
It has been proven that in some cases GOG used known warez crackz to patch out DRM.

I have no idea how they got the files for the game you are asking about, but thinking it's as easy as straightforward as you think is an error. In many, if not most cases when it comes to older games, the source code has been lost long time ago.

Not everything works perfectly, but as far as I'm aware of, GOG does more work towards compatibility issues than any other game outlet. If you don't like the way GOG operates, competing stores are doing even worse job.

Also, it has been the case in PC gaming for as long as it has existed, that not all titles run on all machines.
Sad, but true.
Eventually everyone is going to encounter a game that simply refuses to run on a specific machine, for one reason or another.

To GOG's credit, I have never encountered such a title in their catalog. Admittedly, I have sometimes used third party software to help with things, used settings which differ from GOG's defaults, etc. But there has never been a single game that has completely refused to run.

If you are a true gamer, you should also have at least two different computers. One running AMD CPU, another one running Intel, one running NVIDIA GPU, another one running something else, one running Windows 7, another one running Windows 10 or whatever. Having alternative hardware always eliminates all compatibility problems - 100% guaranteed!

Okay, so the DRM removal is done by GOG instead of the publisher; it's still as simple as uploading a package that hasn't had any further modifications.

The source code has nothing to do with this. How would not having the source code prevent GOG from uploading games that they haven't made modifications to?

If you're talking about Steam, well then at least with Steam I can get the raw game data for old PC games as they received them from the publisher. Steam doesn't mess with game files at all in fact. They just host whatever is provided to them.

And when that happens, I would love to be able to use community-made tools and fixes to try to get them working, instead of being prevented from doing so because of GOG's irreversible modifications. It is great that GOG dedicates time and resources to make old games work on modern hardware. It is not great that they don't give you the choice whether to use their solutions or not.