Is it just me, or has anybody else noticed that GOG no longer sticks to the 5.99 and 9.99 price structure it has always had, and that each game that GOG acquires keeps getting more and more expensive. What's up with that?

I mean, in all honesty, a heck of a lot of the games that GOG currently sells (probably most of them) is freeware and abandonware that can be gotten for free elsewere. It's just that GOG makes these old games XP and Vista compatible, so there is the 5.99 and 9.99 price justification, but now we're seeing a whole new GOG policy with regards to GOG's pricing of software.

Does anyone know exactly what the reason for this is and / or what is really going on with GOG right now? Just curious?

The higher price point of $15 is for their new releases. ('new' as in 'not old games')

You make it sound like something that's been going on for months. :P

Apart from the Witcher 2, the only games over $9.99 were all released earlier this week and they're all newer indie games.

Also, you should be aware that abandonware is not a legally recognised term, it just means games that aren't being sold any more. A game ceases to be abandonware if it's sold here.
As for freeware games, I'm not aware of GOG selling any freeware games.

They're branching out and not all titles will fit nicely into the $5.99 and $9.99 price points. After all, they do have to make an agreement with the publisher, and it's going to be tough to convince them to sell some of the new titles at $9.99. That doesn't mean that no new titles will fit under the old prices. I don't think there's anything more to it than that.

Free? Yes, but not free and legal. This is the problem with the abandonware term, a lot of people seem to think that abandonware=legal, while in reality it is, from a legal point of view, no different from regular piracy. I'm not going into the question of morality and abandonware here.

And as others pointed out, the new price point is for newer titles.

Doesn't bother me.

I guess it's already been pointed out enough, but the new price points are for new titles. Not for older ones. And this has been pointed out in various threads and media by GOG staff.

Almost any new AAA PC title can be found "free" on torrent sites as well, so does that mean they are worth (almost) nothing either? As someone pointed out, "abandonware" is still basically piracy, even if moral implications may be different than with o-d4y w4R3z..

I think the new price points are a good thing because the earlier ones have been apparently the reason why some already DRM-free games, like Vampire Bloodlines, have not arrived to GOG. You could get it DRM-free from e.g. DotEmu, for a higher price. Also, GOG could finally make bigger bundles of several games in a series etc., for higher price points. DotEmu already has that too, e.g. I bought all the "Cossacks 1-2 and American Conquest games" bundle for 20€ I think.

And 90% of GOG customers seem to buy their games from 50-70% off promos only anyway, so...

"games that GOG currently sells are abandonware"

Taking into consideration that abandonware's definition has that "not sold anywhere" part, if we were to expand that previous inclusion we'd get
"games that GOG currently sells are games that are not sold anywhere"
which basically has the same information as
"the games aren't being sold anywhere and they're being sold on GOG"
to which a logic teacher would say "go to jail without passing go" while making crude rapper poses (or more likely they'd point out that it's a contradiction and hence not true).

Does GOG actually take money for any freeware games?

Betrayal at Krondor and Red Baron have been freeware in the past but not for a great many years .

...and Betrayal at Krondor is bundled with Betrayal in Antara, who wasn't free at all.
Sierra offered BaK to download for free for a limited time to promote Betrayal in Antara.

The only other ones I can think of are Zork (which was freeware at some point but not any more) and Ultima IV (which is freeware and distributed for free as well as being included in a paid back for completeness sake).

They haven't raised the price of existing games so calling it inflation seems a bit far-fetched to me.

Also, The Whispered World is 19.99€ (or $19.99, in the USA, I presume) on Steam so it's not like GOG is ripping you off or anything.

Gog sold Betrayal at Krondor stand alone before they bundled it with Antara. Not that Antara has anything to do with anything.
http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/10/12/gog-com-adds-betrayal-in-antara-for-free-for-owners-of-betrayal/

BaK was available as freeware for a LONG time. Many people were confused when it was finally withdrawn.

Usenet becomes aware of freeware BaK release in April '97
[url=http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg/browse_thread/thread/3dd0b802e0403902/7cd91ce6fb6c6e76?q=betrayal+krondor+group:comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg#7cd91ce6fb6c6e76]http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg/browse_thread/thread/3dd0b802e0403902/7cd91ce6fb6c6e76?q=betrayal+krondor+group:comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg#7cd91ce6fb6c6e76[/url]

freeware BaK itself on Sierra's site in May of '99
http://web.archive.org/web/19990508191220/http://sierra.com/demos/preview/0,1690,104,00.html

Great. Every time someone mentions "abandonware", we have to confront either one extreme (why are you selling abandonware games, they are free elsewhere) and the other (there is no abandonware, only piracy, therefore piracy equals eternal hell).

This didn't quite materialise here yet, but it will, trust me.