Hi - where are all the "classic" games? GOG.com used to be really good with releasing a lot of them, but now the focus seems to be on either more recent games, or indie releases. Where are the "classics" that many of us grew up with in the 80's and 90's? Maybe someone from GOG.com could respond here? Thanks.

They're still here

Reselling old games isn't an easy or quick task and it can be a lengthy process. Old games are still being added, at a slower pace no doubt and probably because they're hard to obtain the license for.

There's more than a dozen childhood games from the 90's that I'd love to see here myself, all I can do is wait and hope that someday they'll show up here.

Good point.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to go not play my copy of Doom that I didn't buy here because they don't sell it. :P

There was a ton of releases when Disney/Lucas Art/Star Wars hit here. And then another. And another.
There was a ton of releases (at least for non-Germans ;-)) when BethSoft came here.
There was a megaton of releases when GOG became a publisher for all the SSI Gold Box games.

Seems like instead of a trickle, it's currently a quiet - and then an avalanche. I hope they can keep it up, but I was truly impressed last year, both about quality and quantity.

and its only monday

*waits for JMich with his statistics*

36-24-36?

Oh wait, that's snowkatt! :D

2015 had 308 releases, 64 (21%) of which were pre-2K ones, 94 (31%) being 10+ years old, and 94 (31%) being day one releases.

More info here. Will have to remember to update the data with the latest few releases.

Most of the remaining ones are probably with publishers who just don't care (either never did or have stopped), or legally messy.

Late-2014 and 2015 were very impressive regarding these; 2016 hasn't been so far BUT I'm trying to avoid complaining because it's pretty pointless and I have plenty of games to play anyway. (Just recently finished Little Big Adventure 2, had to use a walkthrough and combat aiming was terrible, but overall a great game with extremely good art, character, and musical direction; at times I got LEGO Island-vibe nostalgia.)

I'm curious: are you only interested in old games? Do you only buy GOG games that aren't available on Steam?

Thus the Number god has spoken!

All praise the number god!

Fair few indie games lately, but yeah more games gog more games.

I think we've scared him off...

Dos is easy because you can just slap in DOSbox. Windows isn't so easy. Mac and Linux are another tale entirely.

They release about as many old games as they ever have -- there's just a much larger quantity of newer games in between. So while the percentage may be lower than it was before they dropped the "Good Old Games" moniker, the number has remained in the same ballpark. Plus, the money they make from all the newer games helps with untangling the rights to more older games, getting licenses to sell them, fixing them up, etc. I seriously doubt they would've been able to afford to buy the rights to all those old SSI games that they released last year without the extra income, for example.

But if your definition of "classic" is limited to "released in the '80s or '90s", I've got bad news: there's a limited number of capital-c Classics from that period, and what ones they haven't already released are probably stuck in one of four broad situations:
1.) The rights holder(s), for whatever reason, has no interest in allowing it to be sold (or, at least, not here), or is asking an absurd price, or has other stipulations GOG can't or doesn't want to meet;
2.) The rights have been so heavily fractured and/or changed hands so many times that no one even knows who really owns the game anymore, and who would have to sign off on it being sold again (this is a big one);
3.) There are problems with getting the game running on modern hardware/software that they haven't been able to reliably overcome;
4.) They (GOG, or the owner(s) of the game, or both) simply don't see a digital re-release being profitable enough for them to bother spending the time and resources to untangle the rights or try to get it working on modern PCs (this one is where the Community Wishlist comes in -- it can tell both GOG and potential publishers that there is still a market for [game x]).

Also, remember that "old" is a moving target. Games that were just a few years old (in other words, still fairly recent) when Good Old Games opened its figurative doors are now more than a decade old, and would probably have been considered old enough to be released here even if GOG had never started allowing newer games in. Quite a few of those are also classics, and deserve to get exposure, too.