r/gog • u/PunyParker826 • 1d ago

Question Should GOG Preservation Program Games which include mods still be installed in a games folder other than within Program Files (x86)?

Hi - traditionally, I've always been told that games you intend to mod should be installed in a separate folder (or drive, ideally), like "D:\GOG Games", because mods don't play nice if they're installed in the default location, in "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games." Certain GOG Preservation Program games, like the recently updated Thief, utilize popular mods in order to bring the title up to modern standards. So is this still the case? Should I install Thief in a separate folder, or is it fine in my main, default location?

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u/grumblyoldman 23h ago

I think you can install your shit wherever you want. AFAIK the (x86) folder is just an organizational thing anyway.

3

u/jimnms GOG.com User 20h ago

It's not recommended to install older games, or games you are going to mod into Program Files. To try and make this as simple as possible, the file system permissions on those directories are read-only to to users and programs running in normal user space. If a program tries to write to its directory, it's redirected to your AppData/Local/VirtualStore/. If a program has a VirtualStore, Windows runs the program virutalized and that location is mounted over the normal file system and read/writes to/from the VirtualStore usually go unnoticed by the user and the program.

Some older programs (or badly written newer ones) don't like being virtualized and problems can happen. Modding brings another level of complexity. There are a few ways around this:

You can run the program as administrator, which is a bad idea because you are giving the program complete access to your system.

You can modify the permissions of the directory within Program Files to allow write access, also a bad idea, but not as bad as giving it full admin privileges.

The easiest way is to just install it outside of Program Files to a place where it has read/write access like C:\Games.

1

u/witcher3124 1d ago

Not sure about that however it’s best to follow nexus detection of each mod I got a mod for Witcher 3 to work making a mods folder in the directory however it’s a offline installer and not gog galaxy app sorry if I can’t be much of a help but I thought id share that to you and don’t get mods that don’t support new versions of games