What about games where the company no longer exists?
Somebody still owns the copyright. What if Gog struck a deal to add games like that for $1-$1.99 and added tons of em?
Obviously since their would be only one way, if they were able to gain the liscense easily their wouldn't be as many loopholes to pass thru as a company that still exists and they hopefully could sell at that price..
And btw, please don't talk about illegally downloading Abandonware. I only call it by that term, I don't call it in the method of free downloads.

They're doing this already. The whole point of this website is to sell old games, including games that are by many considered abandonware. If GoG can find the company that owns the rights, they will try to get a deal and get the games published here.
An example: Robinson's Requiem and Deus. The publisher doesn't exist any more, but GoG have a deal with the company that owns the rights, and can sell these games.

Which now belong to Activision/Blizzard. Basically, negotiating contracts for real abandonware is at least as difficult as negotiating normal contracts, because you have to find the people who created it and negotiate with them (one by one, including every text writer, programmer, graphics artist and so on) directly.

I see. Thanks.
Alot of the early games that aren't on here were made by one person. I'd hafta imagine those would not be $5 by any means.

I'm just saying: it's a lot of work to get the rights, even if it is just one person: You have to find them, review the legal situation and finally negotiate a contract. Even if that person doesn't ask for much, the costs for GoG could still be pretty high. It's not like you could sell millions of most of these titles.

whoa, flashback to a couple months ago

Just one flashback? By now you should see a whole light show!

Yeah, Flashback! Go vote for it on the wishlist! :-D

Yeah, that's easy. Let me just call up my buddies over at Microprose --wait, they're bust. OK, how about getting Sierra On-Line... nope, absorbed by parent company. You think it's really that easy, shooting off a few emails and getting a response?
The reason why it's called abandonware is because they're just that... abandoned. I'm grateful for sites like Abandonia, because without them, we'd be missing out on some excellent games that should be preserved.

>> What about games where the company no longer exists?
Copyright still exists, somewhere. Otherwise the games would be public domain....

exactly, even if the copyright holder is some barber in China, he still has it!

Heh, nowadays Chinese barbers are famed even here in Italy :-P
Well, at least for the fact (they say in TV) that they cost very few bucks and get the job done...