NGL dude, this is a problem I've felt many times trying to play old games I played back in the 90s/2000s. Any half decent gamer knows this is our roots and it's ultimately not a good thing to dismiss abandonware outright, my personal feelings have been once a game is abandonware it should be archived and allowed to be downloaded for free (Especially if it's 10+ years old and a niche) so people can still enjoy the game. But as you said, with the gaming sphere now becoming a huge monolith for money it's not happening and if anything, the issue of abandonware is that publishers will purposefully abandon games to then make "Remasters/Remakes/Reboots" to re-cash on people's nostalgia whilst filling it with insidious microtransactions and "online only" elements to keep them in.