No. The only differences are the number of extras and the lack of a Mac version. The Windows versions themselves are exactly the same.

That’s life. Nothing lasts forever, except Keanu Reaves. I'm not expecting my local store to sell me Fallout and then provide support for that specific version of the game for several decades until I'm literally dead, and not a moment sooner. They’d have to assign a guy to me permeantly. His name would be Steve, and he’d be in all my family photos. We'd have a falling out at my wedding, but he'd show up at my retirement party and we'd mend fences. Then he'd hold my hand as I lay in a hospital bed. 'Steeeeve. Steeeeve.' I'd whisper. 'Did you update Fallout for me this month?'

'Yes, Mark' He'd say, tears streaming in his eyes 'I did.'

Sure, that is the nature of all software, not just games. Most software is written for a specific OS/arch in general and eventually that OS/arch becomes unsupported end-of-life and obsolete. The software is then either ran on those original legacy hardware systems with its original OS, or it is ran in an emulated or simulated environment under newer systems where it might run just as good or better than it did originally, or it might run quirky or with caveats, or it might not run at all (especially if no emulator/simulator/etc. is available). There's nothing new about this with digital games really, it's true for ancient games and software going back to the beginning of computing. We do happen to have some really high quality virtual machines, emulators, simulators such as software like DOSbox that can make a lot of old things run pretty well nowadays, but in some cases not without caveats, and in other cases not at all without fixing bugs or glitches in the game's code. The method of distribution - on CD/DVD or digitally doesn't really affect that. What affects it is what OS/hardware and APIs the game uses and whether there is a way to simulate them now. That's complicated a bit for some games which use online services for some or all of their functionality such as online matchmaking (GameSpy) or other systems, but those aren't unique to digital distribution and a lot of that has been around for 15+ years before digital distribution really existed.

Some games come back as remakes or remasters or similar of course and you usually have to buy them. Why? Because even though they're based on the original game, they are brand new games that took real men real months of time to program new code at a paying job and that required the company or individuals behind the project to pour money into it as an investment. They deserve to be paid money for their efforts just as much as someone writing a brand new game.

Sure, it'd be awesome to have games that run forever on all hardware and I'd love to have that as much as anyone would, but that's just not how software engineering works. Technology changes incompatibly over time and not all software can survive the changes even with emulation etc. If there is no incentive for skilled software engineers to reprogram games like this, then the majority of games wont end up getting reissued or remade. There has to be some kind of incentive to the companies that own the rights to these games to do this or they probably wont bother. The short version of what happened with Fallout is that Interplay was hurting for money and essentially sold the rights to the Fallout games to Bethesda while somehow retaining the rights to sell the game themselves for a while, I don't remember the specifics bug Google does. Anyway under their legal agreement with Bethesda their time came up and Bethesda officially now owned the games outright. The two companies disagreed about the legal agreement they had and it went to court and Bethesda won the lawsuit. The short side of that is that Interplay entered into a deal to save their asses which they didn't really want to uphold and a judge made them legally bound to hold through with it. So the ownership of the games transferred to Bethesda.

The reason the games were pulled from the GOG store (and elsewhere) is that GOG had a legal agreement to sell the game with Interplay, not with Bethesda so they needed to get an agreement with Bethesda if they wanted to sell the game. Bethesda couldn't legally do that either until they legally owned the games, or it would be like selling a car to someone before you went and bought it from the original owner who currently owns it - an illegal sale.

It takes time for companies to go through both the legal processes and the technical processes, negotiate agreements and deals etc. and it will vary from one product to another depending on the detailed specifics of the plethora of legal documents they have to go over and sort out, almost none of which is in the public eye for people to have a remote understanding of what all is happening behind the scenes, and all of this takes time to figure out.

Most people just react with rage to such things due to complete lack of understanding of what's really happening because it's easier to burn the witch (Bethesda) than to try to comprehend the complexities going on behind the scenes when almost zero information is visible.

The reason the old Fallout and the new Fallout are two separate entities in the GOG database is because they are literally two separate entities now. Anyone who bought Fallout before bought it from Interplay, and any support for the game that it might have had, including any potential new patches or other goodies to come along later ended when Interplay lost the rights to the game. Bethesda is most likely under no legal obligation to provide any special support for people who bought the game originally.

I own Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe, bought on DVD years ago when it came out. The game is now for sale on Steam with new features and to the best of my knowledge the current owners of the game have no obligation to me to give me the Steam version or any of the enhancements they've done to it since they acquired it. I'd love it if they did because it would make multiplayer work again, but they have never received any money from me so I can understand if they wouldn't want to support the ancient version I have now. Don't get me wrong though, I understand where you're coming from and in a perfect world we'd have a much better situation on our hands, but if one tries to see it from a company's point of view - even a good company that cares a lot about their customers and doesn't engage in obviously anti-consumer practices - a company that supported all of their games forever, porting them to all operating systems on all available architectures, and reporting them to new ones that come out over time would go completely bankrupt in a short period of time.

They invest money in a product with a limited support window and then it becomes unsupported at some point in time. The same is true for video cards, cars, refrigerators, operating systems, televisions, etc. Even peanut butter will go bad after a while if you don't eat it within a certain amount of time. :)

If you really think about it though, we're all PC gamers and to be honest if you look at just how many games still DO work on modern operating systems either natively or with compatibility tweaks, or DOSbox, a virtual machine, ScummVM or some other tricks, then it is absolutely amazing. Hell, we can run ancient Atari 2600 games, just about every other 80s or 90s console and most if not all of their games, most MSDOS games ever made, all on a modern PC with or without help from the game developer/publisher. No other platform is as capable of running as many historical games as can the PC. So despite the problems you mention, we have it way better than any other platform/OS combination out there and emulation/simulation/virtualization only keep getting better and better every day.

Now the biggest problem we face IMHO, is games that are always-online and require a server component and a functioning profitable company behind it to keep the game alive. As soon as World of Warcraft becomes a liability, watch Blizzard kill off 5 billion WoW accounts and people lose all of what they put into that game. :)

There's another way of looking at this that I think is fairly rational too though. If you consider how much entertainment one gets in hours of play and replay from a particular game versus what one paid for that game, everyone can figure out a point at which they can feel "I got my money's worth out of this game now for sure." For some people that might be in 10 minutes if a game is exciting enough, while for others it might be 10 hours or 50 hours, also dependent on how much they had to pay for the game. So if one got their money's worth out of something and got a lot of play out of it and it happens to stop working some day 5/10/20 years later, that's not really something one should get angered or outraged by. It's just not worth it. There are lots of games out there and if one can't get an old one to work, be entertained by something newer that works and be happy. Remember the good memories of an oldie game and perhaps mourn the loss, but move on. Someone told me once over loss - "It never gets easy, but it gets easier."

Perhaps grind an old game's CD's up into powder and put it in an urn over the fireplace. :)

It's more complicated than that. Wall of text version can be found here.

TL;DR version. Interplay sold the IP to Bethesda, but retained the right to sell the older games (till Dec 2013) and the right to develop a Fallout MMO, as long as they proved to Bethesda that they had funding and could hit milestones. Bethesda, however, wasn't satisfied with Interplay's progress and this led to a long and protracted series of lawsuits, which ended with no winner, as both parties agreed to dismiss the case, with Bethesda paying Interplay $2 million and Interplay giving up any rights on the Fallout MMO.

Except that this didn't occur with other games on GOG that changed publisher hands (Desperados, Gothic, Outcast, etc) and it's also not the case on Steam with the classic Fallout games, which still use the same id as they did during the days of Interplay. The reason why there are two separate entries on GOG is both legal and technical in nature. Namely, that the Interplay version had numerous extras and a Mac version, that GOG couldn't get permission in time for the rerelease and rather than delay it, or risk removing the extras from the old owners, they decided to create separate entries for the games.

Ah, thanks for the detailed info.

Yes, when it comes to legal matters and individual companies and individual games there is no one-size-fits-all rule of all or nothing. Individual companies make their own minds up on how to do things, and for reasons none of us may ever be privy too, most likely sitting in a file cabinet somewhere on 11x14" paper.

I don't know about the full list of games and their histories here that you posted, but the Gothic games did vanish from GOG for quite some time and eventually returned as well. If a game changed hands other than that without being removed then one would have to know the behind the scenes conditions with that specific deal that allowed that to happen, but one can not imply that the conditions that apply to one game/publisher are likely to apply to some other deal. It may look odd to the average customer perhaps but it makes total sense that every product is it's own and subject to individual agreements and a variety of other things that the public is and likely never will be aware of. The only thing we can somewhat be sure of is that GOG likes to sell games and if they have a way to continue selling a game as it hops from publisher to publisher legally then they're most certainly going to do that. If they pull a game, then it is either because any legal agreements they have in place or will have in place when their current agreement terminates does not allow them to sell the game(s) until they're able to reach an agreement with the new publisher.

I think it's important too to note that Bethesda was not previously in the GOG catalogue so GOG didn't have any pre-history or arrangements with them when Interplay lost Fallout. I don't know if GOG has ever given any details about how they managed to bring Bethesda here and get Fallout games back, or why that wasn't possible to do in such a way that Fallout could have just swapped from one hand to another overnight (with or without a new game database ID), but I'm guessing they probably haven't disclosed that information and probably wont either. It's really none of our business as interesting as it might be to know. :)

I'm just glad that they not only brought the Fallout games back (although I had them all prior to the exodus due to the big freebie giveaway promo), and that they dragged a good portion of the id and Bethesda back catalogue here along with them.

My speculation is that there was copyright text inside the games that made it impossible for the Fallout games to remain available for sale, as they were also removed from Steam for about half a year. When they returned to Steam, there were some observations that Bethesda changed the credits section of the original games, probably to make them legally valid for sale again. Something similar might be the case with the recent removal of the Duke Nukem games, not just from GOG, but also from Steam (even though Gearbox has signed up with Steam).

As long as they make a Duke Nukem 5ever, I'm ok with that. :) I happen to be one of the 70% of people who contribute to the "Mostly Positive" rating of Duke Nukem Forever on Steam, rather than the highly vocal 1% or whatever of people that raked it over the coals.

HAIL TO THE KING BABY! :)

to directly address your points: which does not have an impact on your collection as neither gog nor steam remove pulled out games from library. same issue with physical games and it has been for thirty years or more as before internet to get a patch you would have to buy new game. the old game is still part of your collection. no it did not. maybe itunes don't know about it. as already mentioned. not it didnt. you can just get second identical game. same issue is with physical games which will end up broken in the future. less chance of happening as digital shop to continue selling the game must at least attempt to make the game work on modern computers. game from 10 years ago being sold on digital shop will probably work on modern hardware. the one you bought on dvd? it is is probably broken. it is seven years old now and market is growing and the shop is quiet healthy financially and market speaking. so 10 years from now it will still probably be here. and the best thing about GOG? even if they go gamergate or d2d? you still can play all your games. games stop receiving patches after couple of years. skyrim's last patch was in 2013. and thats big game from publisher who has plenty of money and makes money out of longevity of their game. so no. games are not being updated for ten years unless they are something like tf2 or LOL. which would not be able to exist without digital distribution. You didnt have it with physical media either. Good. but then in your case there wouldn't a point in collecting phyiscal games either. you don't really need retro machine. not for 10 year old game. a handful 15 years old might have an issue of working on modern system. that's minority though and there are workarounds.
PC games of course.

To play retro console games you probably need retro hardware. and how did that affect your collection and how would your collection be affect if you bought the game on a disc?

Are you sure? I recall many retail games having different editions, and i am pretty sure they were supported differently (ie. the newer edition would get support longer, also in the form of patches).

One personal case I have in mind was when I had the retail SimCity 3000. A year later, the publisher came with an enhanced SimCity 3000: World Edition/Unlimited.

Maybe a bit similar case would be Thief: The Dark Project vs. Thief Gold.

There were plenty of cases in the retail times where you'd feel left out because you bought an early version of the game, and those examples I gave were even worse than your Fallout example, because there was actual gaming content you would be missing, and wouldn't be able to get besides buying the whole game again. Consoles like Playstation and PS2 probably had even more of this.

Anyway, the same rule applies to both retail and digital games: you pay for the product as-is, and anything you receive from the publisher/store for that game after that is extra based on publisher's/store's goodwill, including patches, or changes to make it work with future Windows versions.

Naturally you have every right to feel miffed by being left with a version that doesn't get the same support as some other edition; this also with e.g. GOG versions of games that don't get the same support as the Steam version. You can demand refund from the publisher for not offering similar support, but they are not necessarily obliged to offer it. Many will react though because they don't necessarily want bad press, even from mere GOG users. Like Hand of Fate GOG version finally getting the patches and missing DLCs (I decidd to vote with my wallet, ie. buy the game (from GOG) only after the publisher shows some support for the GOG version; now they did, great!).
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You are comparing apples to oranges there. Retail game patches were normally just delivered for some time to fix game-breaking bugs. It was quite exceptional for publishers to release updates to their old retail games in order to make them work with e.g. a new Windows version, even many years after the original release. That didn't usually happen, the continued support for games was much shorter than it generally seems to be with digital games, especially GOG games where GOG (the store, not the publisher) itself supports the games making them e.g. work in Windows 10.

Which reminds me, I have a retail version of King Kong (2005) that doesn't work on Windows 7 or later. The publisher later released a "Gamer's Edition" that not only has better graphics, but apparently is also more compatible with modern Windowses. It might be those compatibility problems are related to the copy protection that the game uses, IIRC.

Ubisoft never updated the older (retail) game to work in Windows 7. I was thinking of buying the newer version from GamersGate as it was supposed to be even DRM-free there and the price was pretty nice, but unfortunately GamersGate removed the game from their catalog before I was able to buy it. Not sure if it is sold anywhere else, e.g. Ubisoft's own service. Maybe the license to use the King Kong movie license has expired, and that is yet another game that will never be sold again, period. Too bad, I wanted to play it, and my retail version (which I got as a gift) is useless as I don't have powerful enough Windows XP machine to run it (my XP machines are too weak for a 2005 AAA game).

So much for retail versions getting the same support as the other editions...