About Windows 7 incompatibility

Hitman 3 (2021) Technical Issues
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A rant about the Windows 7 incompatibility…

A bad move in my opinion, as the two previous games were compatible with that OS.

I know that you want us to upgrade to latest OS for many reasons, including security, but this upgrade is a downgrade in my opinion.

It might have allowed you to put some little upgrades to the game engine, and adding a layer of network compatibility and security, but that also could’ve worked in Windows 7 if you really wanted to.

I don’t understand why doing that sudden and brutal change in the trilogy, as it will make a part of your playerbase not willing to upgrade into Windows 10 for many reasons.

It was clearly proven in the past that Windows 7 is a strong and solid system that can even be made compatible with DX12, and that will be kept updated until 2025, because lots of people still use it and despise that Windows 10 upgrade that is worse in so many ways:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-windows-10-is-so-unstable-and-microsoft/97ec65a1-ea74-4843-ad5d-75da89404d77

The most painful in that is that it was possible to play HITMAN 3 on Windows 7 before a recent update: Reddit - Dive into anything

Why removing that possibility while it is harmless and that can bring new more players?

Ubisoft recently had a similar issue but it was concerning the launcher, who was suddenly made incompatible with Windows 7 to force people upgrading and lots of them got their entire gaming library locked because of a simple change in a file. Hopefully they came back to reason and everything works now:

As to myself i don’t want to be forced into that new OS until the last moment, even considering the possibility of switching to linux as i really don’t like that new OS (like many others) for lots of reasons.

Anyway this is the only game that i have that is using Windows 10. All my others games are compatible with Windows 7 and some that are way hungrier in terms of resources like GTA V.

Forcing me using that crap that is Windows 10 only to play this game is a bad move and will deeply affect my playtime, as i’m barely using that OS.

I’ve tried many methods around the internet but unfortunately nothing really worked. I prefer having everything into one system rather than constantly switching between one and another.

Looking forward to find a workaround for that. Too bad IOI :frowning:

More topics regarding the Windows 7 incompatibility:

Thank you for reading me, cheers!

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IO will probably make H3 be compatible on Win7 around the time they’ll bring back the online component for Absolution. Doubt they’ll be bothered with it, especially since there are very few Win7 users on Steam and I bet it’s no different on Epic either…

Screenshot 2023-04-06 at 17-25-45 Steam Hardware & Software Survey
Screenshot 2023-04-06 at 17-25-45 Steam Hardware & Software Survey940×664 28.9 KB

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DirectX12 is not some little upgrade, it is very huge. And working with one and not two APIs probably makes it much easier to maintain the game.

Game devs don’t reinvent computer graphics with each game. They use tools the OS offers and on top of that, they make their game. And for H3, they need Win10 features. It just cannot work on Win7.

Porting these features back to support Win7 is basically porting Win10 features themselves to Win7. That is not feasible, likely not even possible for Microsoft, let alone IO.

(link to DirectX Developer Blog)

Uh do I really need to point out that Hitman is much more demanding than World of Warcraft?
Also, in that case, Big Corporation Microsoft had to help Big Corporation Blizzard to make this possible. For a market of 3.5 years ago, that looks different to today.
Microsoft seems to no longer do that for obvious reasons. Their FAQ lists that this hack only supports DX12 features that are from 2018.

Q: Do you support all D3D12 features on Windows 7?

A: The current runtime supports D3D12 features as released in Windows 10 October 2018 Update (notably, DX Raytracing but not DirectML) on Windows 7.

It seems to me, the moment Blizzard dropped the ball, Microsoft did not bother to catch it. This whole thing was just a transition technology. Feel free to ask the people at the DirectX Discord Microsoft links to for further questions. Come back to us with what they say today. :wink:

I would call the May 2021 patch not an “recent update”. The list of steps also shows it was not intended to work with DX11.
The DX11 version of H3 was seemingly merely a development thing so they could work on the game.

Everything you linked to is itself years old. I had to switch too for H3. Windows 7 is a dead horse. Get off from it. It won’t stand up anymore. Don’t rot along with it. :wink:

Windows 10 is good. For a Windows OS.

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I have used Windows 10 (and now 11 in some cases) for several years now. It’s not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be and I think that a lot of people who claim it is horrible are just parroting what other people have said.

Despite the fact that Windows 7 is still technically supported by Microsoft, it’s a dead Operating System at this point. Windows 10/11 is really the only viable option for most people.

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I also used it for several years now, and I don’t remember a single time when I had an issue that made me regret the day switching to Win10 from 7. The bloatware can easily be ignored or even disabled using something like Windows10Debloater, updates can be paused and will ask you when to install, never restarting your PC on its own and stuff like the old Control Panel can still be accessed :person_shrugging:

Now that’s an OS I’m afraid to use because of all these talks about ads… I’ll probably skip it like I did with 8 and use the next one :grin:

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For whatever it’s worth, I have yet to see a single advertisement for anything within the Windows 11 operating system.

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Having aligned the taskbar to the left and retrieved the old context menu, I can’t find a issue with Win11 on my side.

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With a pack of few tweaks, Windows 10 is “doable” if i can say, but we’re very far of the greater operating system that is Windows 7 :confused:

Linux have now a wide variety of interesting distros, but it’s way deeper in terms of configuration and use.

Windows 11 have a greater potential but it seems way too much complicated atm. Looking forward to the next improvements anyway :+1:

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In my opinion, Linux is a non-starter for most “normal” people. It’s too complicated for most to do what they want to do. I say this from the perspective of someone with a CS degree and over 40 years of experience with development, operating systems (including writing them from scratch in Assembler) and day-to-day computing.

To get a game like Hitman running on a modern computer with Windows (let’s not go into versions at the moment), you need to install the operating system, install the game, and you’re pretty much ready to go.

That doesn’t work with Linux. You need to figure out what distribution works best for you, install that, configure a bunch of stuff, get more software to allow you to run foreign code, etc. It’s tedious for most non-technical users. Remember that one of the main reasons that people still use MacOS is because it’s “easy”.

I remember when people actually had to learn DOS and become relative experts in command line instructions. Linux had an opportunity to make in-roads with that audience and couldn’t do it. Despite the love that some expert users have for the flexibility and configurability of Linux, the fact that a normal user can’t just pop a disc in or press a single install/download button and begin running the game is going to mean that it will never be as widespread as Windows.

Additionally, I think that most users don’t really care about all of the so-called issues that the CS community has with something like Windows 11. Does it run my game and can I check my email? Good enough for me! That is unfortunately the attitude of most users and the companies need to cater to that attitude.

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Doesn’t Hitman 3 run straight out of the box on Linux thanks to Steam’s Proton?

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