So, when Stellaris 3.8.x came out, I installed it, and it crashed on startup. Always. It tries to send Paradox a crash report, but the crash reporter doesn't know how to use the internet. Regrettably, I had deleted my offline backups in an unjustified act of faith in the upgrade, so I've spent over $100 on Stellaris with no game to show for it.

I'm running on Windows 7. I'm sure you didn't want to hear that.

Here are other things that don't work:

Technical support. One of two things happens, depending on my browser.
1) Cloudflare won't let me access GOG technical support no matter how many times I check the "I'm a human" box.
2) The virtual chat assistant asks me to choose my operating system and gives me a box with no choices to choose from. It doesn't understand me when I try to tell it I'm using Windows 7, and it won't let me contact a human.

GOG Galaxy. This is Windows 7.

Upgrading video drivers.
I tried this. What a nightmare. I got the drivers from NVidia, but they weren't properly signed. So to install them, I had to go to the advanced boot menu and choose the disable driver signature enforcement option - every time I started my computer. This didn't resolve the problem with Stellaris in the least.

Steam: They're going to break any games I have with them early next year, so forget them.

Paradox Launcher: The paradox launcher can't find the internet. I don't know what's wrong with it. But I just ran Stellaris from Stellaris.exe. Of course, I had to move a couple .dll files that were creatively misplaced into the Paradox folder.

Windows 11: My tinfoil hat and I consider the newer Microsoft OSes to be spyware disguised as operating systems.

Forum posting.

At this point, I'm suspecting the 3.8.x files are deliberately designed to break compatibility with older systems, so I'd be happy to get a copy of the 3.7.4 files from GOG.