DirectDraw Emulation Is Broken In Windows 8/8.1

I wouldn't say that it isn't made for games. The games themselves are actually running as expected there's just this DirectX issue which is preventing them from running to their full potential.

I've found games which simply refuse to run Windows 8/8.1 also do not run on Vista or 7. This is where VMware Player comes into use, but this DirectDraw issue in Windows 8 should be fixable.

OK, I have 'old' games running fine in 8.1 and without compatibility settings, which never work for me. But 8 and 8.1 are, as I understand it, primarily made for touch screen which was the reasoning behind my games statement. I even have Freelancer 1997 running in 8.1 ;)

DirectDraw was deprecated in DirectX 7 which itself is 14 years old. The API (code contracts between software and hardware) hadn't updated since, Software developers were advised to not use this interface for more than a decade. What you see is gradual abandonment from hardware developers and no effort put in compatibility testing by software developers.

DWM never played well with DirectDraw. Search StarCraft here and you will find many issues since Vista. Now in Windows 8 DWM is always on.  Also in Windows 8 color depth is limit to true color and above so lower color depths are software emulated (try Layer_ForceDirectDrawEmulation and DWM8And16BitMitigation if you know how to edit the registry).

Good thing about interface deprecation is that it is now a fixed interface. It is now safe to hook DirectDraw APIs or write a replacement based on a supported graphics interface as no breaking changes will be introduced in a future update.. Search "directdraw wrapper" and you can find many such libraries, most of them have a limited set of supported games, however. 

The fact remains that in Windows Vista & 7 the games were more playable than they are in Windows 8. Sure there may have been some isolated issues which you have pointed out above but to go from working for the most part to universal slow speeds is a joke and if the answer is that it won't be fixed then it would be great if we could have some official response with literally "The speed issue in old DX games is not going to be resolved".

It proves that Windows Vista & 7 are actually more viable platforms for gaming at the moment as they can run new games flawlessly and old games with playable FPS. Presumably nobody is expecting these games to run absolutely perfect in Windows 8, but at least to be playable as they were in Vista & 7 at decent speeds.

I don't think this is going to be resolved by Microsoft. Deprecated means no engineering effort will be put into it. And we did see no effort in the last decade. No compatibility testing, no security updates. Efforts to solve this from the open source community is another matter. If there's enough demand, maybe some video card company will release a card that support DirectDraw to put the software emulation back in its place, who knows. DirectX is a contract between hardware and software developers. Microsoft's fallback is a spare tire not a full replacement.

Yes Windows 7 is a more viable platforms for DirectDraw games. Those games have a average shell life of a few weeks. Nobody then write DirectDraw games and expect it to be running on software emulation full time or there are still people playing them after a decade or two. I would say it is amazing that they lasted this long without the developer's effort.

It may well be the case that even more old junk has been removed from the newer versions of Windows. A game is no different than any other piece of software, it is the developers' job to make it compatible with newer releases of OSes, not the OSes' developers' job to worry about keeping backwards compatibility with decade+ old stuff.

It is not nice, as said game developers may have gone out of business by now, but that's reality. The only people capable of fixing this are themselves, what Microsoft could do at best is to try and add some error mitigation features... which for something that has been deprecated for more than a decade is simply not worth the effort.

Until customers demand more support from game developers, this will be a process that will keep repeating as time goes and technology improves.

, what Microsoft could do at best is to try and add some error mitigation features... 

Or, you know hire a single programmer familiar with ddraw to implement in dx/opengl/software in couple weeks...

Some people implemented such things in there spare time for games that didn't work. WineD3D for windows had a semi-functioning ddraw implementation. (some graphics were corrupted)