Gog.com MAFIA III - Issues after Downloading offline Installer

[_roman_]

How comes gog.com does not put a readme files in the folder with the offline files to download?

Note: A few months ago I downloaded king of seas from gog.com. Well no possibility to save. Game state lost in Windows.

I downloaded yesterday from gog.com MAFIA III offline installer.

• my radeon 7800xt / 7600x / 2x32Gib DRAM has too low specs to run the game according to the game files in windows 11 pro.
• When starting the game pure black screen without reaction -> I tabbed to desktop or tried to get task manager running. The game is such broken, it's insane
• At some point i get full window mode, but changing with alt+enter to fullscreen freezes the mouse
• I entered all settings but the game forgets them! graphic details are all on low on default!
• After reading the x times post about issues about mafia III i found somewhere the semi solution to go into settings of the .exe and disable - i think it was called - full screen optimisations.
• Unpacking of those files took ages. Taskmgr showed the cores of my 7600x were barely used. I doubt my kc3000 2tb drive is the issue.

Question: Why are gog.com games are such a mess? They are broken.

Question 2: What is the real deal to get *all music back (which i read and it seem it is missing)? And how to get the game really running as it should be?

Final words: Just providing files without a "readme" is not really something a company should ask money for!

I'm kinda sure i bought mafia 2 and mafia 3 with my own paid prime week from amazon.de
What makes matter worse these were recently given away "paid games" from the paid amazon prime service which are mislabelled as "free games". free and paid are different terms which gog.com is unable to comprehend.

MAfia 3 is worse than fixing a git repro game like tuxemon to get it running in the first place. Note: tuexmon did not run after i fixed a lot of compiler bugs from the git repro on the local machine.

Edit: support page from gog - a big nope: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002567393-Mafia-III?product=gog
/mnt/windows/GOG_Games/Mafia III Definitive Edition/readme_de.rtf -> the typical nonsense - not useful.

edit 2:

Google Gemini suggests the same, what i did yesterday

Mafia 3 Black Screen Fix (GOG, Windows 11):

1. Disable Fullscreen Optimization:
   
   • Go to the Mafia 3 game folder.
   • Right-click the main .exe file (e.g., Mafia3DefinitiveEdition.exe).
   • Select Properties and go to the Compatibility tab.
   • Check the box for Disable fullscreen optimization.
   • Click Apply and then OK.
   • 
     
   • Note: All settings for grpahic details will be lost and gone!

 

[nomdeplume]

@_roman_

In many cases the missing element to getting a game working in this situation is

Uninstall with something that clears all registry and other traces outside of install files.
INSTALL AS ADMIN
then set it to disable fullscreen opt. and probably run as admin
a few tries may be needed in stubborn cases it won't properly install MS files (Visual C, etc.)


Since this is an offline single player game you can easily firewall threat assessment is up to you.
However, there is a growing trend towards forcing LARGE UPDATES + EULA for online games that formalize granting root level access to your computer. Bad bad bad and very very bad.

 

[Vayra86]

Maybe GoG will give you an offer you can't refuse, soon, to fix this