The publishers get 70% from each sale on gOg, the other 30% goes to gOg.

What happens with that 70% depends on the deals the publishers has with the developer.

Usually a publisher owns IP, so no $ goes to its creators. For example, I doubt Chris Avellone gets paid for ongoing sales of Fallout New Vegas.

I understand that. But if a publisher, like Brøderbund, doesn't function any more, then what? I don't really know what sort of deals usually go on between publishers and developers. Is it royalty or one time payment? But my biggest question is: if an "expired" developer was supposed to profit from it's games' sales in the past, is it safe to assume that it still does so 10-20 years later?

Haven't heard but once I hear new vegas. ;)

Depends on contracts and whether the developers studio actually exists anymore... It is not as easy as publishers get all monies, in some cases the problems getting games re-released is that the rights are held by several parties, including the developers (or whoever bought up the developer 10 years ago....). Some contracts also have time limits, so that the publishers can only publish for x years and the rights reverts to devs, and so on.

For something to be sold here, someone has to own the rights [as GOG needs legal contracts]. If the original publisher is defunct and something is released here it is likely that someone else acquired the rights since [that could be another publisher, the original developer, or a third party]. Who that is, is a case by case basis.

This is, also, partially why it is quite hard for GOG to bring some classics back to the store - when the rights of a game have been splintered up and dispersed over several different companies getting them to agree to the sale is fairly difficult.

It's perfectly legitimate that you want that but the truth is that whether a game is old or new doesn't have much of an impact on whether the developers will profit from the sales. Most of the time a publisher just covers the production costs for a game and then keeps all the revenue to himself and the truth is that the developers are (normally) perfectly aware of what they are getting into. It's just how things work.

Many regular users/gamers seem to consider it wrong or evil that their money goes to the publisher instead of the actual creators of a game but when you find statements by developers about their old games they are usually just proud that people are still playing them (and I have *never* seen some bitter article by a veteran developer that said something like "EA is still cashing in on MY work, I made that game!"). Their job was to make a game, when a game is still popular twenty years later they just did a friggin' good job.

Even if the company is defunct, whoever bought it out usually owns the IP. So there'll never be a case where some publisher doesn't own the rights to the game. In the case of Broderbund, it was bought up by The Learning Company, which was bought up by Ubisoft. Sometimes when a company goes bankrupt (and isn't bought out by another company), they may handle things differently: THQ for example, auctioned off the rights to its games to several companies. 38 Studios, as another example, when they went bankrupt....I'm not sure what they did. The rights to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is possibly owned by the State of Rhode Island? Or EA?

As far as developers earning a profit from a game they made, unfortunately, it isn't usually like that. The game industry is heavily biased towards the publisher owning the rights to the game and any earnings from it, other than if they specifically had something in the contract with the developer.
Some developer/publishers are bucking this trend. Double Fine, for example, makes a big thing about the developer of the game keeping the rights (which is why most Double Fine games are published by themselves, or with contracts that specifically mention this).

There's also the 10% "Presidente special permit" fee.

No, wait, that wasn't enacted because GOG chose the "incorruptible" trait. Never mind.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/so_whos_getting_the_money_from_old_games_sales/post6

Okay, thanks guys, I more or less get the picture now. Well, I don't think "evil" is a term that's applicable here, but in general - yes, I'm usually much more willing to purchase a game by an Indie-developer nowadays. That way I'm directly rewarding creative people, who designed a game for me to play.

Oh right, must be Tuesday :D. Yeah, I am not saying all. After all, some of classics GOG is trying to get are living proof of that.

Not to be overly cynical but I'd say only about 10% of the games released at any given time can be deemed as "original". :P I'm not complaining because I love a good clone as much as the next person but lets face it, most of what's out there is just that: clones.

Of course I think the bulk of the really creative stuff is coming from the indy games and I would guess (I may be totally wrong here) that those games tend to cost a little more because the designers and programers are for sure getting paid for their efforts, which they richly deserve.

:)
Need me to get some spare money to snipe the 3rd one during a sale... I want to rule in 3D!