Even though you won't like it but most people do make films/movies/books for the sole purpose of getting as much money as possible. Only a few would like to offer some artistic experience for the world. So in the end it's simple business and an artistic work is the same as any made product.

Wow, someone answers that part of my post but doesn't make comments about the ability of the California state government? :)

I'd have to go looking but I could have sworn I say download links. Maybe it was one of the other collections. I know those CD shareware disks they host are downloadable as well as torrentable.
I was going to question the legal status of abandonware as the last time I looked into it, there wasn't any such status here in the US.

Turns out I was incorrect again and I have to delete what I wrote:

https://www.engadget.com/2006/11/23/us-copyright-office-grants-abandonware-rights/

Certainly, when i make something i hope to make as much money from it as possible. But how much profit is enough? twice? Ten? A thousand?

Remember, Square Enix was annoyed and disappointing, calling their Tomb Raider game a failure when it sold a mere 4 million copies...

Why should I? It's already in the link I posted and other than that why should I care about California? It's far away for me ;)
But your link is only tallking about the fact that those games are allowed to b ecracked for archival purposes so it still cannot be distributed freely. Something abandonware fans often say.

Not true. They are very much available as downloads.

O.K. - since you are the all-knowing and wise cat I am quite sure that I am wrong. But please show me on this page
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Prehistorik_1991
where I would find the download button? Maybe I am just blind.

OK, I'll give you this one; it's indeed stream-only. But please, search for Master of Orion or Theme Hospital and do tell me of your results. If you are feeling particularly brave, you can even search for Resident Evil. :)

So here goes my grey area for those games ;)

A major reason people would buy from Steam or GoG or elsewhere, is ease of use. Finding patches, doing compatibility updates and checks, etc, this stuff is more valuable than the content itself.

I don't know about you, but although i could probably find an old copy of NWN iso to play for free, but getting the patches and applying them are a pain... while downloading a gog installer is just a couple clicks. Not to mention dead links and stuff later.

I'm aware of at least one good site that has old games with an easy download mode, extract and play (don't even need to install); Although the download speed is slow... so those with patience to get the file(s) correctly, and no support.

I love that site but I did see a lot of modern stuff ripped like dragon ball z that you can still buy on blu ray. I can see this for stuff that is impossible and out of print that no one can ever get again. but stuff that is still being made should be removed till the print run is finished.

Right! People playing whatever games, just because they work. Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit?

If a game doesn't work or crashes constantly or works at single digit FPS, well i wouldn't play it. And some games are notoriously unstable before they had been patched; VtM Bloodlines being one (and some like that Batman game for PC which still runs terribly even on the best PC's). Although if you go the opposite direction, you won't buy a PS4 game and put it on your PC to play would you? why? Doesn't work that's why :P So buying a game that doesn't run/can't play would be a negative selling point.

But just because they 'work' as intended is also silly, because grass growing simulator on Steam is an example of... crap... And many older games had bad UI and take a bit to get used to, and may be too much to put the effort into it.

So obviously there's going to be a combination of it working, being easy to update and/or easy to get working, and being a good/compelling game.

And comparing Libraries (Steam vs GoG) well a good curated list is preferred obviously to lazy open floodgates of anything goes.

It's a bit confusing from which point of view you're talking. (Most) people here aren't publishers or stores.
Sure, for the masses, ease of use is very important. Nowadays there are still console gamers around that use 'configuration issues' as a reason to not play PC games.
Me, of course I like that GOG made a lot of old games playable with little effort - but I can get anything working without them too. Backwards compatibilty, emulators and a lot of information online is a great reason to play games on PC/Windows.

My view is from a gamer, not publisher or anyone else. Although i do programming as well.

Certainly with emulators and good tools you can get most of the games/programs working that are decades old. If i want to play Castle of the Winds again, well i can do that; But that would be impossible without Dosbox or VirtualBox and lacking a Windows 3.1 installation.

Ease of use could be either just getting it up and working (configurations and emulators).

But i suppose some of that also comes from the games themselves. Played Albion recently? The mouse and UI interface felt backwards and not very intuitive, although i'd probably get a similar result if i try to play Dark Sun again, or other old games where the design made sense for the time and emulated other games before the evolution of the designs.