I know this may sound like a silly question, but in all these years I’ve never seen it asked before. I know that we have long been in the 64 bit OS and cpu era, but many games, including new ones, come with a 32 bit installer. Why? Even some new games have it, but these new games require 64 bit OSes. I must be missing something.

Let me give an example…the new(ish) LotR: War in the North. It too has a 32 bit installer. I got curious and ran it after the game was installed. Well, It ran and finished without error. The only thing I did was change the language, which did in fact work. So, is this the purpose? Reconfiguring? I cant find any other logical reason, as the 32 bit installer actually has no .bins. Is this some workaround installer for folks running 32 bit OSes and relies upon regular installer’s bins? That doesn’t make any sense either if it requires a 64 bit OS. I just want to understand. And no…I don’t wanna write support.

Easier to do it that way? There are 32-bit games and 64-bit games, but the installers of games that require 64-bit don't need to also require 64-bit, what an installer does wouldn't need that large address space, while some of those installing 32-bit games may actually still do so on 32-bit OSs, so instead of having two different processes for creating installers they stick to the one that does the job and can run on both kinds of systems.

That doesn’t explain anything at all about what I was asking though. I already mentioned all that. I’m strictly talking about 64 bit games precisely. The only use I can find for a 32 bit installer for those is reconfiguration . Nothing much else fits the reason.

Let me rephrase this because English is not my native language. Lotr war in the north legacy can only be played on a 64 bit OS. It has a normal installer with associated bins. Underneath those are what gog calls a 32 bit installer. For this particular game, this is nonsensical as it only runs on one type of OS. Gog’s labelling implies it is for installation on a 32 bit OS. I take it GOG simply mislabels those. Those are actually configuration utilities from what I tested on my end. I wanted to know if that was the purpose. There are many games like this. Of course, I realize that some games coming out can be run on 32 bit OSes, but this is not the case here and in many other instances.

When you have 64-bit software, it requires a 64-bit OS. However, a 64-bit OS doesn't require 64-bit software.

Games can be very demanding on hardware because they use a lot of memory beyond what 32-bit memory addresses can handle. This is why games benefit from being 64-bit. But smaller installation software doesn’t have high hardware demands, so any bit version that a modern OS supports works fine. Using 32-bit software for installers is just as good as using 64-bit.

You’re assuming that 64-bit is automatically better for installer software just because the game and OS are 64-bit, but it really doesn’t matter right now. So using a 32-bit installer for everything is easier than dealing with two different installers for different games (64-bit or 32-bit).

Yes, some games can have both 64-bit and 32-bit versions. Both work on a 64-bit system, but the 64-bit version doesn’t work on a 32-bit system.

Just as the previous Poster, you have completely sidestepped or overlooked my question entirely. There is either a language barrier, people have poor reading comprehension, or simply folks using Ai. How have you in any way answered my inquiry? You guys are on repeat without listening or thinking about the question.

Can you answer this.

Why you need 64bit installer as what's the benefit using it?

Are you basically asking why 32-bit stuff exists on a 64-bit system?

Brother….I asked exactly what I asked. I cannot make a simple question more obvious. You are overthinking. I’ll gladly wait for someone with better reading comprehension. No offense.

Software can be change binary or include 32-bit runtime to support a 32-bit system, while other files are just data.

Why include 32-bit in 64-bit files when you could just patch the game to be 32-bit?

People can download the 64-bit version, which works better on a 64-bit system. Some people can also run it on a 32-bit system and then patch the game to make it work. The change can be really small, like swapping one file from 64-bit support to 32-bit support.

So the point of the 32-bit installer is to make the game work on 32-bit systems.

For 64-bit only games that won't work on 32-bit OS's anyway, you seem to be seeking a deliberate technical advantage when they mostly isn't one. It's often simply a case of how auto-build system work and not wanting to mess with it once setup.

Eg, GOG uses InnoSetup to create offline installers. Take a look at their download page and see 64-bit was only just recently added with InnoSetup 7 this year : "We are proud to release Inno Setup 7, which includes a 64-bit edition, as well as a 32-bit edition. Using the 64-bit edition is recommended. As noted above, it can still build 32-bit installers, and does so by default."

tl:dr - 32-bit is simply the default for the most popular .exe packaging tools that GOG (and others) use.

Edit: You're right that we did see previous problems with 32-bit games being installed by 16-bit installers (that then stopped working on 64-bit OS's), but given how bit-ness stopped scaling, ie, it's going to be decades (if ever) before we "need" 128-bit OS's in terms of 'running out' of 16 Exabyte RAM (16 Billion GB), and Windows is capped well below that anyway at 128GB Home / 2TB Pro / 6TB Enterprise (vs 32-bit 4GB RAM that was a genuine real-world 'wall'), that's a non issue.