3 years ago I needed a "beta"[1] BIOS update for my 2012 Ivy Bridge motherboard because it shipped with EFI and every NVIDIA GPU since Pascal (2016) only works in UEFI mode. That machine is still perfectly good for modern games. If I had chosen to upgrade my GPU later and Gigabyte did the same as Intel now, I would be SOL.
[1] Gigabyte used to mark BIOS updates as "beta" when it's past their time (in 2012 Gigabyte terms: a year) to provide less warranty & support in case something goes wrong. They're as stable as the main versions.
I'm running a DH87RL with the 2018 BIOS. It's pretty remarkable that they released those updates after 6 years of nothing, though they only changed the CPU microcode. With the number of CPU vulnerabilities being uncovered recently, they're probably deleting the BIOS files because they're tired of maintaining the microcode patches.
