awesome.

Sierra... they made the first Half-Life...

Activision/Vivendi have been some of the better publishers in regards to abandonware, and Vivendi has been good so far with AGD interactive (makers of the kings quest 1+2 remakes) by allowing them to distribute their remakes (for free of course.)

The fact they have left the ESA may just be due to differences in their thoughts about how software publishing and the games industry should move forward, and I would really hope they disagree with the sometimes confrontational and stubborn attitude of the ESA.

Haha, Valve still sells Half-Life over Steam, and a large amount of other games that would be applicable for Abandonware if they weren't available on Steam.

So...Blizzard and Sierra are out!
Quite interesting :D

Blizzard is Vivendi's star. I bet they guard that property religiously.

Doubtful that's the case. Hopefully the actual reason is something that might convince others to opt out of ESA too.

Let's not forget that ESA is just hired help! Companies that wanted to protect their copyrights joined ESA and they were looking for places and people who were offering such games for download.
ESA has no abandonware policy of their own, they simply do what the owners of copyrights ask them to do - protect their copyrights.

Still Activision and Vivendi are big publishing names and hopefully they have decided to do something about the older titles they own. I hope they'll do something like Cinemaware decided to do and offer their older games as freeware (even though you had to log into their site).

On one hand that means many great games available for fans, on the other hand it would be a blow to abandonware sites. If most publishers decide to release freeware titles not many fans would go to abandonware sites to get the same games they can get from the official site. Just a thought...

The abandonware site has something that the official site of few games lacks - the former has a lot of old games gathered together, while if there weren't any abandonware sites, people had to travel along the internet in search of all official sites of all the countless Dos games.
Another thing is that an abandonware site more to offer than an official site - game's reviews, hints, advises and support of other people about a game and so on. All that you can't get from an official site.

In light of all that, I doubt abandonware site(s) would ever lose on popularity.

Although I don't doubt in Seb's great wisdom Scatty is right. ;)

Let's put it like this!

People who are really dedicated to old games will still keep visiting abandonware sites and abandonware sites (or at least Abandonia) will still provide some services (like technical support, hints...).

But there will be less incidental people who find abandonware sites, so there will be less never members, who'd just find Abandonia (or other similar sites) and become members.

So the quantity will fall and hopefully the quality will raise, but we have to realise that these games are getting older and older that that what we (this generation) might see as a walk down the memory lane will be something complete alien to younger users (they will look on games like The Sims as a trip down the memory lane).