I think it's abysmal that Bethesda do not do anything as far as patches go to assist a product like Fallout 3 running on modern OS', yet will still flaunt it in a sale. And it still reaches near the very top of the Steam best sellers list during a sale, and yet instead of putting in effort to make the game run confidently on modern OS', Bethesda instead put up a banner saying "this game is not optimized for Windows 7" - and a lot of people have troubles running the game on Windows 7 without doing some tweaks first.

Bethesda has a rigid framework for games support after their releases: They patch up until a certain time, then drop the game cold, and don't life another finger for it, even while there are issues they never got around to addressing. I think it's more common from other developers to address big issues if they're still arising, to maintain good relations with their customer base, but Bethesda have, so far in their development history, made a statement that without having their customer base challenged, they won't make an effort to do any kind gestures towards keeping their own still well-selling legacy products solidly functioning.

And on a different level, it also seems a bit like Bethesda simply don't respect their own past accomplishments once they're finished with the core development, with their pump-and-dump model of post-release game support.

Being someone who had issues running Fallout 3 on Windows 7, I can't help but feel bad many of the buyers of Fallout 3 GotY who are purchasing it right now, who probably associate the Fallout brand and Bethesda studio name with a trust-worthy experience, and have expectations that the developer cares about the experience they're going to receive when they try to play the game. Getting the game to run after some tweaks was not an issue for me, and wouldn't be for many on these forums, but most people don't mess around with files to play a game, and probably don't know how to go about trouble-shooting the issues they have.

I think there is a divide between the image of Bethesda as a high quality games producer, and the below-industry-standard support they provide for their games after a certain cut-off point not too long after the games' initial releases. If Bethesda think their past products are worthy of an advertised sale to advertise the pre-order availability new installment, maybe they should make a bit of effort to see that those who take them up on the offer of their games will receive a competently-functioning product upon its installation, without needing to search for fixes and make custom tweaks.