After the game was released, Valve updated it with a 64-bit mode (i.e. Half-Life 2 was a 32-bit program, they had a compatability layer built in for 64-bit machines. They actually removed the game from people's computers? I also remember seeing Doom a little later and thinking, 'What a ripoff of 'Dark Forces''. There's nothing keeping you from copying the game out of your steamapps folder and dropping it on an appropriately configured VM and trying the game out there.

That being said, either way, these republishings are welcome. But as a result, they'll never get some of the titles that are on Steam, simply because it's no longer feasible for the developer to do this. GOG is different in that they actually work with the developer to 'update' the game sufficiently that it will work on a modern computer. But just as often, the developer is just looking for a way to shovel out some of their old crap that sometimes they don't even have a working copy of the code for.

Developers that actually give two pence about their rep will actually be responsive to these issues and attempt to fix them.

Steam with old games is a crapshoot, not because they don't care, but because they are the publisher and not the developer of most of these games and thus don't actually have anything they can do about most of the problems.

Jedi knight 2 steam not working