Are there any instances of a 3rd party making digital copies of games available and paying some licensing fee back to the copyright holders? Something akin to how book libraries handle ebooks?

Maybe Steam falls in this category a bit, but I'm thinking something more exhaustive and focused on games that are otherwise out of production.

[–] Dread_Spark@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Good Old Games (now GOG.com) has quite a few titles that are old and out of production, made compatible with modern systems and sold in DRM-free digital format, in addition to whatever new stuff they can get (also DRM-free, to my knowledge.

I'm sure their payment agreements with publishers are much like Steam's, just with different exact terms and different amounts of money per game due to the age of the games in question.