1. Nor did I say it did. I was just throwing an actual number out there, and making an observation about it.

2. I don't see it as an issue either. I'm not sure who really wants that to happen.

3. I don't understand what you mean, I guess. At the time when these older games were released, many of them came out on both CD and on a set of floppy disks. If you got the floppy disk version, you sure as hell did have to "insert disk 1" to play the games, because it was copy-protected. Copy protection wasn't always considered necessary with CD back then, as it was not easy to make pirate copies. But the CD needed to be present to confirm that the disk existed. (At least on installation.)

Morrowind checks for the presence of a CD (but a mounted disk image works.) In the case of Battlespire (which I don't have) apparently some of the content doesn't get installed from the CD; that in itself enforces the need for the CD.

4. Zen/Beth bought Fallout several years ago, but they didn't pull the games off GoG until last year (2013), when the previous owner's Distribution Rights expired.

They took them off GoG last year, but they're still listed for me (and I can still download them from there) since I had already bought them.

Ive tried to play redguard. You know what the first thing it did was? Tell me I needed to have a graphics driver from a voodoo card. Im barely old enough to remember what those are. Emulating one is... difficult. And crappy.

Sure, but that's the sort of thing that GoG is good at fixing. Their business is selling old games with the modifications and installers necessary to work on modern systems.

That could be a problem. Apparently Bethesda lost the source code for a game or two when they moved offices. There were posts about it a long while ago.

I think it was legal stuff related. The lawsuit between Interplay and Bethesda legal related, so we don't discuss it here.

More than likely its a contractual thing. The earlier games were owned by Interplay until December 31, 2013 (at least for purposes of distribution and marketing). Since then, Bethesda has taken over the rights to distribute the games. Why they have not re-released them is up for speculation. We have a thread in the Fallout Series section to discuss the old Fallout Games.

...and that was probably when they were pulled. Makes sense. Thanks Tal and Cat Herder.

Talk about a coincidence...Fallout, Fallout 2 and Tactics are back up on Steam, with the package selling for $12.99.

Not back on GOG, though.

Steam is giving me the option to http://store.steampowered.com/sub/45615/

I think it has been established that the games became available again after Rosveen's post was written.