I'm counting 5 plus 3 older ones on Steam. That's at least a third of the catalog. Licenses are usually perpetual. More likely a combination of money, not seeing older titles as worth it and treating other platforms as second class.

Signs of a great sale.

I completely forgot about this game! When I was a kid I saw the box for this in a bargain bin. It was a small box game like the original System Shock (which I also still have). I can’t remember what it was marked down to, but it seemed cheap and my Velcro wallet had enough cash so I bought it. Literally had no idea what it was I just went for it. Thank you for sending me down memory lane!

You are welcome :) Budokan is actually an awesome fighting game (and a rare one in that it is not built around button mashing). I am surprised it is not on GOG already.

Powermonger would be nice. I can't fathom why it's not here already as we have Populous

This is the way I got Drakan: Order of the Flame (from a random Portuguese E-shop) and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (from Amazon, before it was released on GOG).

Probably the best example of games being gone due to licensing is The Battle for Middle Earth games. Good luck getting those. They are on Amazon, but if you want a sealed box, just BFME 2 without the expansion will cost you around $120...

But when all else fails, there are always "alternate" means of getting a game :P

Moar EA games, pls!

It's been, what, 3 years since the last batch. Friggin September 2016, for crying out loud!

The Sims would be a nice addition, for starters.

Thanks for this info. Thing is we are all mostly speculating. Expiring licenses are the exception rather than the rule. It seems strange that this would be the case for 14 of their titles.

In a lot of cases material was never meant for digital distribution but only physical and it becomes too much of a schlep to manage. Or as we have seen with I think Descent there's a problem with publishers not paying the royalties. Then there's the issue of advertising that's usually present which while the benefit is the other way around are still trademarks.

I don't think these are insurmountable issues though and smaller companies that really care about their games will try to find ways around it. For larger profit driven companies like EA however it may just simply be too much of an obstacle to manage for older cheaper titles without much of a return.

Then what seems to have become a trend is when it comes to racing games newer titles tend to become replacements for older titles which fall to the wayside and are seen as not being worth it to support any longer. We see the same thing happening in other genres as well.

Sim Golf and Sim Farm, please. I’d snap them up in a heartbeat.

Also Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 1 and 2 at least, 3 would be nice as well. Need for Speed, the Sims, Black & White 1 and 2 with expansions... such an expansive catalog that is ripe for wallet picking!

I do continue to be puzzled why more EA games pre-Origin client & already on Steam aren't here yet. Maybe EA really want to push their client to build that ecosystem. Or maybe it's a cycle - we just got some Focus Home games and they didn't release anything here since like 2014, and maybe similar will happen with EA and co.