The last I'd heard about GOG and SWAT 4, the game's rights situation was unknown and Activision was unable to devote resources to seeing if they owned the IP. What changed? New management? DId GOG or someone they were in conteact with manage to find evidence themselves? Or did GOG talk Activision into letting them pay for an investigation with the understanding that if it turned up nothing they'd never see a cent of the money back (insanely ballsy if true)? Or was it simply new management at Activision?

And on that note, if GOG ever started a crowdfunding campaign to crowdfund the acquisition of or investigation into one or more game's rights (the latter case being explicitly stated to be a gamble that may not result in a release), how do you think it would do? Would you pledge to it?

And one more question: a lot of people have given up on long on games like SWAT 4 ever being re-released and just pirated them. When such games finally do get re-released, what do those people tend to do? Do they pay for them, and if not, what's their reasoning? Examples: "I already own a physical copy." "Meh, already beat it when I pirated it." "Too little too late; you corporate douchebags don't deserve my money.'"

Since I cannot speak for pirates (I'm not one of them), I can only answer for me:
I do own a retail copy of SWAT 4.
And yet - as soon as I logged in and saw the release thread - I bought two copies - one for me (for reasons of comfort) and another one for a friend, who -back then- enjoyed playing my copy, but never could lay hands on a retail copy of his own (and who never went after one by other means).

I actually think that the SWAT 4 release happend partially because Activision actually acquired the last couple of stocks that Vivendi was holding.Activision until then, wasn't 100% sure if they had the rights to the game which is funny since the game was published by the Activision swallowed Sierra company.The fact that they couldn't devote some resources to actually dig through their archives and confirm ownership of other awesome titles like No One Lives Forever is just pure bile ;).But they are going in the right direction.That's what matters.Cheers

One big reason for me to buy the legit version is to get support for it, in case I have issues running the game. It gives me a peace of mind that I have a full(?), updated, working version of the game.

The GOG version is usually also easier and more straightforward to install and run, ie. no need to use any virtual CD emulators to mount the disc images and then install them, and then running updates or cracks or whatever... You just run the GOG installer and it does everything that needs to be done.

Also, to show support for GOG and the publisher for re-releasing the game to begin with.

That's difficult to answer. GOG nor Activision didn't officially explain themselves. We can only guess. Probably the legal situation was clarified. Hmm, probably not really. I feel like GOG is good at digging out old games by itself and doesn't need financial support upfront. I buy their games later happily and I feel this gives me something and this in return is already motivation and reward enough for GOG to continue trying to geld old games. There are still some left. That's again difficult to answer. There are no studies about the behavior of people having played abandonware out there. So we can only guess. I guess a minority buys the games later but the majority will have moved on and reason that there is no reason to waste money and gain nothing but a good conscience in return. However, some may do that actually.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I had pirated a few games because I could not get them anywhere (or because there were only a few disk versions available costing hundreds of dollars). When those games appeared here I bought them and now I don't have any pirated games anymore.

I think I haven't bought every single game that I ever downloaded as "abandonware" before, once it got re-released, but I did so with quite a few, and I stopped downloading and using "abandonware" altogether, after I discovered GOG and online stores selling the games I'm interested in as digital versions for good prices (and with original language support).

One thing to keep in mind though when you buy these re-releases now, is that while it's cool to support GOG and publishers who are interested in keeping their games alive, by buying the games now you won't be able to offset not buying them back in the days. Often the prices are much lower now and the actual developers don't get a share of the profit anymore (if they ever did so in the first place, that is).

I just found a possible answer: Vivendi Universal recently (January 15) sold its remaining 5.7 percent stake in Activision back to the company. GOG.com probably took the initialtive and bugged Activision about games whose rights could have shifted as a result. Since Vivendi owned Sierra, it's entirely possible that we might finally see games like Willy Beamish and Freddy Phrarkas, but there's no telling where Activision's stubornness ends and now-ended rights issues iwth Vivendi begin.

This isn't the first time an Activision-owned game got released after a rights shirt. Bloodlines got released tellingly soon after the source material's rights shifted from CCP to Paradox.

I highly doubt that GOG was able to negotiate, come into an agreement, test and get the legalese out in a mere week. No, this must have been planned back in 2016, when Activision started rereleasing games on GOG, after 3+ years of total absence. Considering how Activision didn't release a single old game during that period (neither here, nor on Steam), my gut tells me that they were just not interested in unearthing old games, either because they weren't satisfied with the sales, or because their lawyers were entangled with the whole "getting free from Vivendi" thing.

I gave my SWAT 4 physical copy away in a giveaway on reddit a couple of years back, so technically I wasn't an owner when the digital release happened here on gog, but even if I hadn't given it away, I would still have bought the game right away for a couple of reasons.

1. I actually wanted to play it again.

2. I think it's important to vote with your wallet and support things like this to let gog know they did something I thought was great, and I'd love for them to rescue more games.

3. The price was fair. 10 dollars for this absolute gem + expansion? Hell yes.

4. There are some games I just have to own if they become available. The same went for some of the D&D games they rescued a while back (eye of the beholder series in particular). I have an almost irrational fear of them being removed from the catalogue and me missing out because I held out. I'm for example really glad I bought games like Blade of Darkness and Re-Volt before the rights were yanked away. They're both amazing games, and it sucks for people who either didn't notice them in the catalogue or wanted to wait for discounts.

I can't speak for pirates, as I don't pirate games.

Whether or not I'd pledge is a tough question. It would depend on the price, because if it was simply a matter of pledging 10 dollars or whatever to pre-order a copy when it became available, then sure I wouldn't have a problem with it, but I can't see it happening. I think it might be a breach of etiquette on the various crowdfunding sites, and it goes against the spirit of crowdfunding (at least in its current iteration as gog isn't making anything, they would just be securing rights). I have confidence in gog knowing what they're doing and working very hard on securing rights on their own. I'm happy to buy the products they rescue, and I'm not convinced they need our financial help to do it.