My favorite joystick for X-wing was The Firebird because it came with software that recognized numerous games and let you assigned many of the multikey presses to the different buttons. I'm not sure if such a thing exists nowadays. These days it seems many button reassignments are done in the game itself, and X-wing didn't have that.

$671.69

(but free shipping)

I admit that comparisons with the prices from back then just don't work for me.
Just look at who is actually getting the money if you buy the game now.
In most the cases the developer/artists who made the game are long gone, they won't see a penny of your money.
Most likely the original publisher is also already out of the picture.
While the current publisher probably just scooped up the IP on an auction sale.
The idea that by buying the product you compensate the makers for the work they put into it just doesn't really apply anymore in many cases.

I don't really have any moral qualms to restrict myself to paying at max 2-3$ for these games. Regardless of the fact that the game itself may actually easily be worth 20-25$ (or more).

It says 8,49 € for me, it seems you can put price on perfection.

Yes, the stores can 'suggest' price points, but ultimately the price is set by the publishers. Anyway, it is in most cases a collaboration / negotiation between the store and the publisher, resulting in contractual obligations from both parties, including base sell price. Most often, the price is set to be equal across different digital stores (so no differential treatment - different calculations of regional pricing do have an effect, though).

This is different than from physical stores, where the store will buy x amount of copies from the publishers and then sell them off again at a price they deem worthwhile. In a digital store, there is no stock, and the store and the publisher instead split the revenue from each sale (the industry standard is 70/30 split between publisher and store, Humble and Itch.io work on different scales).

Anything else you want to know about the topic?

No.

My original post didn't touch on fairness, because neither did the thread starter. FWIW, I agree completely. A "fair" price for a 20-year-old game is nothing, maybe a donation to a charity who'd keep the game playable on modern machines (e.g. the Internet Archive), maybe just paying one's taxes and having the govt do the preservation work via public libraries and museums.

As the situation is now, I mostly buy old games on deep sales, unless they're at risk of being removed. Restoration-wise, GOG does their best in a bad situation; the legal work is unfortunate overhead I'd rather not pay, and the portion that's going to the rightsholders (of old games) I actively resent paying, unless the rightsholders are doing something awesome and worth supporting right now. I don't much care if the current owner is the original one, because it's 2018 now and the original owner of a 20-year-old property was most likely a bougie, not a dev.

and the games were worth more because they were cutting edge back and now they aren't. After a game would come out there would often be cheaper budget rerelease.

A factor which helped gog was that a lot of the old games had quality lacking from newer ones for a period of time.

"a lot of the old games had quality lacking from the newer games"
Bungie: Making content is toooo haaaaaaard!

BOOM! Sale. Happy?

*****, I ain't paying 10 bucks for a 26 year old game. Especially one I paid full price for 26 years ago when the ******* thing was published. You people defending this **** are ******* crazy. This thing should be public domain by now. Accepting **** like this makes you part of the problem.

[*Post modded by PainOfSalvation: Please refrain from excessive usage of swear words.]

I wonder, are the rules for video games the same as for films? Then it will take a looong time before the first video games will become public domain. To change it to something more reasonable for video games there must be a political decision made and an international agreement and laws passed in all (or most) countries. Then we may see a new time limit of thirty or forty years. I cannot imagine they would ever accept twenty or less.

Care about this a lot? Go lobby for it!

nobody's forcing you to shop here dumbass, go complain to the people who make copyright laws. you've been a member for almost 10 years and just now are whining? sheesh

Do you even know how public domain works? Anything published after 1977 will not fall into the public domain until 70 years after the death of author, or 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first. 26 years is nothing. This is like whining that antiques should cost less because their old, that's not how selling stuff works. If you can't afford it, sucks for you but you won't die from a lack of videogames.

You know what I do with stuff where I think the cost isn't worth it...I just don't buy it. That's it. I don't go around necroing topics with entitled, petulant rants.

There's only one copyright law; it applies equally to everything. Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't, but that's the way it is.