Maybe one reason is the "sale"-policy with sometimes very big discounts from shops like GOG and Steam? Is this now the faulty of clients like you and me? Other reason is flooding of the market with thousands games every year (Steam), thus rapidly falling prices after release of almost all games....and the "destructive" sale-policy of the shops and publishers doing the "rest" of course.

PS: Naturally we all as gamers do profit from this "destructive" sale-policy, that is a fact.

Thanks. Truth be told: I only managed to buy so many games because of the nice discounts that sometimes get here.
There are people here who own more than 2000 games on their library! Those are the true patriots I guess.
As for me, since I own far more games that I could ever play I just buy games to support the store now. I try to buy at least one game every week. The fact that I quit smoking (a single pack of cigars costs almost 5$ in my country) also allowed me some spare change.

Unfortunately not everyone can spend so much on games. There are priorities in life, specially for folks with kids. But thanks to the store's discounts once in a while one can buy a great game for less than a 2$ . Hence the reason why I claim for discounts: sure, it means smaller profit margins for the publisher and store - but it also means more sales and more people playing games.

I like low prices as well, but I tend to look past the discount percentage and instead what is the end price. I quite often buy these 5€ games even without any discount, thinking "Do I really want to wait x months to get a discount worth of one or two euros?". I can easily save that kind of money by mugging some old lady outside and stealing her purse, so it isn't really worth the wait.

If a game costs more than 10€ (discount or no), then I start thinking more carefully "Do I REALLY want this game?". Only in relatively rare cases I pay more than 30€ for a game, but sometimes that happens too.

As like me!

In my opinion with more than 1.400 games in your account...you are a "true patriot", too!!

As I do.

That is also true.

I am searching also for older games (classics) from 199X for a price less than 2$, that is also true....so in that matter you are NOT alone. :-)

I do not know exactly the interna of GOG, but it is very possible that games, which are sold at "dumping-prices" are reaching more gamers.

Sierra <3 Good memories indeed, of hundreds of hours of text-parser and point-and-click adventures.

Nice to see Sierra getting some attention. But not mention of Space Quest? Aww....

Great writeup though.

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Which is illegal. 'Cause this game is no abandonware. The game has an existing and functioning rightholder and the game is officially sold.
If you are trying to say that a game somewhere can be illegally downloaded for free, then this applies to almost any (at least singleplayer) game.

Cool article. Just one question - why haven't you even mentioned Quest for Glory? Sure, it's not a pure adventure but a hybrid of adventure and RPG, but still.

Can't say I ever considered QfG adventure. When you start with character creation, every action develops your character (which doesn't even happen for most "full" RPGs) and success and even available actions and paths often depend on stats, that's RPG to me, even if many solutions are adventure-like.

(I'm probably not saying anything below you aren't already familiar with tbh :p)

I do think there's something to be said for the deep "instabuy" price (like a candy bar at a checkout line where you might not think too much about buying it) where somebody might not be super-enthused about it but will grab it just to try it out. For old games especially that price is, to me, probably around $3 or less. Some of these Activision games have been here long enough to be deserving of deeper discounts imo. Maybe GOG should try to convince the Activision suits to give some of the worse-selling Activ games here discounts of at least %50 off, or maybe do more bundle discounts that are deep but require you to buy a bundle of games (70% off for a bundle of adventure games not in a series, like 10 games for ~$20).

Your second paragraph may also be true depending on the oldies - how high is it on the wishlist or how well did it sell "back in the day", and has it already been on Steam, stuff like that. GOG seems to have been rejecting old stuff that may be obscure, but (and I know some people don't like the wishlist) from what I've seen they've been pretty good about bringing stuff that has at least a few hundred wishlist votes. The batch of Activision games after the "Activision drought/gap" were all ones that had at least a few hundred wishlist votes - Freddy Pharkas, Willy Beamish, Soldier of Fortune, Shivers, Heart of China, Throne of Darkness, etc. - and several had close to or over 1k.

(VTM Bloodlines and SWAT 4 came after the drought and have since shot to the front page bestselling all-time.)

My point is that Activision is asking a very high price for a 30-y.o. game, when you can buy 3 King's/Space/Police Quest (and 5 Quest for Glory) games for the exact same price.
Your point was?...

I'm not very interested in what you think about Activision, so I did not comment on this part.
I commented on exactly what I quoted.
So, my point is that if someone write "Abandonware" on the site's header, this does not mean that the site really contains abandonware. If you were more careful when reading, you would see it from the first reading.

Interesting...