[egypturnash]

Honestly I find GOG's whole mission of "update old games for modern Windows" kinda weird when I compare it to what people who want to play old console games do: they just fire up an emulator. Running a virtual Windows machine sounds like a much easier solution than individually patching every crusty old executable to run on the modern OS, and re-patching every single one of them when MS rolls out yet another new graphics/controller system a few years down the line.

[1313ed01]

Their DOS releases are fantastic. I install the games, then copy the files to my virtual C: directory for DOSBox-X and know those games will always Just Work and I will never have to reinstall anything or mess with configurations. Some games I also copy to my phone to play in DOSBox in Android.

To repeat myself from old threads, it would be awesome to have something like a WindowsBOX, like DOSBox but emulating (probably) Windows 98SE, fully open source. GOG could use that for old Windows games and never have to modify the games themselves. I would be happy to support GOG developing an emulator like that, rather than making old games run on new Windows.

[egypturnash]

Really I'm surprised nobody's done "WinBox" yet. Proton kinda covers that except it runs in Linux, not Windows. I dunno how it handles old Windows games as I've got zero nostalgia for those, my Steam Deck mostly runs modern stuff from small teams.

[qwertfisch]

It’s almost not necessary. Windows has – in contrast to Linux – a very good and long compatibility guarantee. You can put up any program from 1995 (at least being 32-bit) and it will start and run.

The things GOG is improving are some bugs that occur mostly in games, e.g. something with color palettes in pre-2002 games. But I think every game using DirectX 9 or later will work without any adaptations, even ten years from now.

[ConceptJunkie]

ReactOS has been around for 20+ years. You can run some old games on it, but it's hardly at the level of WINE and projects based on it.

[jeditobe]

30 years ^)

[WorldMaker]

GOG uses emulators as well. GOG has a share of games that use Dosbox or ScummVM as two somewhat common emulators they will configure a game to run in that I'm aware of.

That said, there's also something to be said that if a game is patchable, there is some value in patching it to run directly rather than "need" an emulator.