legally speaking how can gog.com sell old games? take planescape: torment for example. the developer Black Isle and the publisher interplay is long gone, does gog.com pay royalties to either of them? what's the rule/law about selling old games?

When the company goes under the rights are typically passed on to either individuals or creditors (or sold off to someone before that). GOG contracts with those rights holders.

GOG seeks permission of whoever the current license holder is (in Planescape's case I think it's Activision.) The license holder then gets a cut of the profits. Sadly the original developers don't really get to see a penny unless they're still part of the license holder and even then they won't see any cash directly, it's more a case of it being funnelled back into a new project of theirs.

http://www.interplay.com/
:p

Anyway, someone owns the rights to the stuff. GOG makes a deal with the rights holders and pay to them as was decided in the contract between the parties. When a company goes bankrupt, there's a big yard sale where other companies and connoisseurs rush in to buy all kinds of IP and rights to stuff, so with bankrupt companies it's about hunting down the people who bought 'em. Yyyup.

It has something to do with whoever owns the rights to the brand and the games. GoG gets in touch with current owners and sets things up that way.

Black Isle / Wizards of the Coast I believe a lot of their staff went on to form Bioware which is therfore part of EA. Interplay are also still about and when looking at the game listings it tells you who is the current owner at the top.

thanks for the answers.

I dunno how that goes, but Baldur's Gate was made by BioWare and published by Black Isle Studios, so they were both active at the same time. From what I heard, the company that Black Isle guys went to form is Obsidian Entertainment, and according to Wikipedia, BioWare is older than Black Isle.

Yeah its really weird.

In the game listings Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 show as Bioware / Atari : Bioware now though are attached to EA

Icewind Dale 1 & 2 and also Planescape are listed as Black Isle / Atari

Atari / Hasbro are the current license holders for the D&D games, its all a bit confusing

Baldur's Gate was made by Bioware, but Icewind dale for example by Black Isle. It was like that since always.

It's a shame that original creators don't earn a single penny on old games they made, but that's how the law works.

In other case, we might have never seen them since the original company went under.

But it is quite normal. I don't get any continual profit for certain piece of code that I made for my employer years ago I they might be still making money of, especially if I have changed work since.

In fact, if I make any great invention while I work here that could even theoretically be linked to my work or what I have learned here, my employer owns the invention, not me. That really sucks, that's why I try to make sure I don't invent anything really useful at my work.

I guess Interplay could have always tried to stay 100% independent, publishing their games as shareware etc. I could have also started my own company instead of becoming a corporate slave.

They licence the game from whoever currently owns it and the money goes to them. Unfortunately, copyright isn't usually about fairness.

Good points. It's just I feel better when giving my money to humble game creators instead of EA for example :D (haven't they have enough?!) :P

That's true of course. If I think about the "support" aspect, I think more I am supporting GOG for their work on trying to make the games compatible, persuading companies to release their older games, and offering support in case I have problems.

But I could also think that I am gladly sending money to EA and Ubisoft so that their bigwigs realize it may be profitable to keep releasing some of their back catalog DRM free, especially if GOG does all the hard(?) work anyway.

It is too bad the original creators are usually out of the equation, but I don't see any other solution to that besides sending all of them a few cents for any old game I buy and they were working with. :)