Been loving GOG and own 23 games now, but I was wondering after browsing through the community wishlist - Is there really any hope of GOG being able to acquire the necessary licenses for games like Baldur's Gate, Blade Runner, Jedi Knight, etc.? I personally would pay a premium if it would cover the extra costs involved, probably up to $15 or so for a lot of them. But is that the only obstacle, or are the license holders just not willing to give them up? I think Steam has had the same situation as far as the classics that they've put up for sale - All of them have been non-licensed titles that are wholly owned by the game publishers (I think). Would anyone else here also pay extra for those games?

Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic I'd probably pay $15 for, but not more than that. I would love to see them on here since I've "acquired" them through less legal means, and haven't been able to find them in stores.

Obviously depending on the game, I would pay up to $20. The System Shock's are the best example I can find, since they're impossible to find at an affordable price, if to be found, at least.
It bugs me to know that some publishers are ignorant enough to be unable to see the amount of money that is to be made out of these games; collector's are selling old games for exorbitant prices and neither the developers nor publishers make a single penny out of these sales; since most games sold enough copies to justify the money spent on developing cost, GOG's DRM-free offering shouldn't even be a problem (i.e. the possibility of piracy). If anything, the publishers would benefit greatly from releasing the games through Steam and GOG. They gain nothing from simply holding and losing money over the trademarks over these brands, and they certainly have no plans to release them in the future themselves.
The only plausible, sane solution for publishers is to release the games and gain even more popularity and money over them old, "crappy" games that are simply sitting there by themselves at their offices.

I believe that GOG will be able to persuade ATARI (current holder of BG/IWD/PS:T IP and frachise) to offer it's games here eventually.
However EA and Lucasarts are different beasts all together. Both are notoriously paranoid about the IP's and franchises they own and guard them jealously. EA is also mammoth of gaming industry and probably no one actually knows all the IP's and franchises it has aquired over the years. Because it's so large, it's difficult for small players to deal with (EA could probably buy both GOG (and it's mother company) and VALVE with money in it's bank and still have more to spend). Expected profits from any deal probaly need to be in over 100k$ scale for them to even consider negotiations and any money required to pay up front would probably exceed anything smaller companies could affort or be willing to pay.
Steam are in somewhat better situation than GOG. Steam has been around for longer, the company and it's catalog is larger and it has no bias against DRM (steam it self is one after all) or other restrictions and has no set price range for games offered in it's service.On the other hand Steam has not shown much interest on other publishers back catalogues until recently so we'll have to wait and see how things develop there.

I would guess that the biggest problems with those is that Atari doesn't hold all the rights, since they're licensed off the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, and the Faerûn (BG/IWD) and Planescape (PS:T) game worlds, all of which are IPs of Wizards of the Coast.
Same with KotOR and other Star Wars games, not only the developer and publisher owns the rights, but also Lucas Arts (I believe, they are the holder of the Star Wars IP, right?).
And that, if I've understood correctly is the main point of this thread: licensed games, where the publisher and developer are not the only ones holding the rights.

Technically, the LucasArts Star Wars titles are not really licensed, since the publisher also owns the rights to those IPs as part of the larger LucasFilm Ltd. company. So at least in that case, the subject of the game should not really be an issue. The D&D licensed titles might be a completely different story though.
If what the GOG guys have said in interviews is any indication, the biggest hurdle to getting some of those games is the lack of DRM and convincing the publishers to accept that.

ATARI does sell the BG and IWD pumdles so it has the distribution rights and it did buy all IP and right regarding BG series from Interplay. They even have rights to further develop the series and franchise.
As for any SW title, I believe Lucasarts holds ALL rights to those games and AFAIK right to distribute them as well.

This subject is brought up pretty often when it comes to the games from the Wishlist :)
Well, at this point we all know how a dire job is for the GOG staff to look for and than convince all the various rights owners to license their game on GOG.
Hopefully, sooner or later they'll be convinced and we'll be able to play our beloved games, especially as more and more publishers/developers hop on board each week. So don't lose hope :)
However, i'd be definitely willing to pay a higher price for any of the games on the wishlist, although i realize that not everyone would be willing to do the same.
And someone would probably perceive this as a "betrayal" or GOG getting greedy.
I'm sure, though, that if the price will start becoming a problem, the GOG guys would ask the community first, and than decide wether to raise it or not.

Several D&D-based games have become available on GameTap (PlaneScape: Torment, both Baldur's Gate games, etc.) so there's certainly a chance that they could make their way onto GOG at some point. There aren't any D&D games on the market at the moment except for Neverwinter Nights 2 and the MMO, so reviving these titles would probably be seen as quite a profitable move; after all, what company doesn't like free money? ;)
Unfortunately, for a lot of other licensed games it's not very likely that they could show up because the license has expired or reverted or new titles based on those licenses are still being made and sold for retail prices. GOG's low prices are great for players but will turn away publishers that think their games are still worth more than $10.