It seems there are many classic games that will forever be stuck in lapsed licensing limbo. There might be a path to re-releasing them, but there isn't a big enough customer base to justify the legwork and cost. Sports games with players, teams and leagues that may need to be compensated. Racing games that utilized real car models from car manufacturers that would need a cut. Movie tie-ins and game franchises made by companies that have long since lost the rights to profit off the games they made and would have to work out something with the current rights-holders. Games that have utilized a lot of licensed music, some of which might be integral enough to the game for it not to be worth releasing without it. Would you be willing to pay a premium for these sorts of games if it was the only way to get legal re-releases of them digitally? The idea would be that the licensing fees would be factored into the cost per unit rather than the publishers bearing the cost of licensing up front for older titles they view as having a limited audience. Which classic games would be worth the added cost to you?

No classic game would be worth the premium cost, there are too many new great games out there to compete with.

I fancy Legacy of Kain Blood Omen, but i own the original disc with French language, something a digital release is not prone to include seeing Diablo, Warcraft and ton of others... I would not buy it without French text & VA, and would not pay more than 20 euros for it here, and it is still quite a lot; as i can play it already anyway from a modern installer i keep.

What prompted me to post this thread was the release of Gary Grigsby's War In The West and War In The East. Even though they launched at a 50% discount, both of them with their DLCs came to a total of $104.95 US. Woah!

The developer's explanation (see here) for the cost of the games cited the "inelasticity of demand" vs. needing to sell the games at price that still allows them to make a profit.

On a side note, your original post quoted 2by3's position, which contained an argument about long-term updates and development.

And indeed, their patch notes are not for the faint-hearted! :)

i would never pay that much money for a game even that i want let alone some random guy putting his name above his own game trying to be a tom clancy, war in the west looks complete crap, and definitly not worth the price, i doubt anyone would buy it , bet its on steam for like £30 alot of devs think they can charge more on GOG cos they think DRM FREE is a premium when its not its a basic right for a gamer!

New or Old doesn't matter to me, if it's good i'll buy, after all it's just money no big deal.

It's not normally the price point that's the stumbling block in these cases. Even more so in terms of anything from sporting games (with team names, sponsors, board sponsors, players) and a similar case for anything related to a licensed game.

But for the sake of the topic.

No, not really. Physically? sure, but digitally for probably dated build that won't work on current system and would probably be left to go stale. Preservation is key, but digital only and an extortionate cost is not, and would not, be good for anyone bar those selling it, probably leading to a wild west

I wouldn't use that as a comparison point, as Grisby's War games are a very peculiar and unique niche which doesn't really exist for that many games. It is a kind of a niche game, that doesn't get a lot of competition because of how detailed it is and how small a player base it has. People who buy it are willing to not only spend a lot of money on it, a lot of time as well, which is something that can't be said of most games.

Yeah, the Grisby games may not be the best comparison point, but they got me started down this line of thought. A game never seeing the light of day again, or charging a premium that makes a re-release viable to the parties involved.

you could, off course, use NOLF as an example instead

It's hard to consider the Need For Speed games niche, it's still a really popular IP. If lapsed car licensing weren't an issue and the classic installments could be sold for $5.99 or $9.99 each, they'd probably sell pretty well here. How much more would those of you that would like to buy the games here be willing to pay (to cover the cost of the car licensing)?

What of the Grand Theft Auto games and the licensed music being stripped out? If the games were released on GOG in their current form sans much of the music, would any of you be willing to pay for the music that was included in the original release as DLC?

I'd probably be willing to pay a small premium to encourage a re-release if it were the only way to buy a rare 90s / 2000s game from absolutely anywhere, but I wouldn't pay anywhere near +£20 let alone £60-£80 for a 20 year old game given that I bought the retail discs of NOLF 1-2, Dune, Freelancer, Outrun 2006, The Neverhood, Elite Plus, Frontier: Elite 2, Lemmings 1-2, Prey (2006) - and many more games unavailable anywhere "digitally", from Ebay for barely £3-£10 each. (Even as I write, NOLF 1-2 original discs are still on Ebay UK right now for £4-£5 each). So even for "out of print" games, there's still some competition keeping any re-licensing premiums within the realms of sanity.

A "digital version" to me does not automatically command any massive premium over a good quality 2nd hand disc version especially if any DRM has either been officially / semi-officially patched out, the game uses a source port, or if the user is happy enough to source a safe "NoCD" and / or manually apply any patches / tweaks. Even the GOG version of many games still needs tweaks applied (eg, patches, unofficial fixes, upgraded renderers, HD texture packs, mods, 3rd party levels / missions, etc).

Sounds like another BeamDog 'Enhanced' Edition... ;-) Some games like NOLF wouldn't be the same game without the highly distinctive music. Honestly, no. If not all soundtracks could be restored / re-licensed, or game + "re-licensing premium" DLC cost too much, that would probably convince me to just grab the original disc version off Ebay and patch it up manually as needed.

I'm the same. Take NOLF for example I have it running fine under Windows 10 and i've modified it so I don't need a CD to run them and don't have to re-install when I need them just have to run a .reg script for NOLF 2 & JACK. So pre-ordering them on digital (which is basically what the OP is asking) I wouldn't do. I might buy them from GOG if they show up so I don't have to mess about with CDs.

Many GOG games as you say need fixes to get running under newer systems anyway, so that's no different to buying CDs from eBay and doing them that way for certain titles. Many older titles like NOLF can be gotten cheap from eBay and can be fixed. Others like Star Trek Away Team or Elite Force will run fine on newer systems from CD.

You will though get the odd game that does have issues and just will not run at all. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine had issues for me for example from my CDs, even using the "unofficial patch" where as GGO's version fixed them all so GOG's versions are not all bad.