The Details are in
Well, the Goldberg news is still a very hot topic and as of now his deal is just involving WWE 2K17 but Dave Meltzer of the wrestling observer newsletter reports that 2K Games have previously wanted to sign Goldberg to a specific game deal but the ideas were stopped by the head man himself Vince McMahon. This came after Goldberg split from WWE in what wasn't a mutually happy ending. Goldberg said things aren't allowed to be said and he previously claimed he would never work for Vince McMahon ever again.
Dave Meltzer had this to say on the matter, "2K games said that they first tried to sign Goldberg for previous games, but it was none other than WWE Chairman Vince McMahon who put a stop to that. Fans of the game will remember that Goldberg was in WWE 2K14 but that had to be included for the 30 Years of WrestleMainia game mode. But other that he hasn't been in a game since Smackdown vs RAW which was 2005 but that said even at that point he'd already left the company alongside Brock Lesnar."
Interesting
Dave Meltzer also reports that the split left Vince McMahon so negative on the former World Heavyweight Champion that when WWE was in talks to sign UFC's Mike Goldberg as an announcer, McMahon wanted him to change his name for that reason. The original plan for Goldberg's arrival in WWE was for him to work a series of three matches against The Rock, but those plans changed to what we ended up seeing on WWE TV when Rock's movie career took off.
The reason things have now changed other than tensions cooling is that the Best of Goldberg DVD sold better than anyone expected and made them a lot more money than WWE thought, so people speculated that Goldberg could be best for the WWE business again and help bump WWE 2K17's game sales up from last year as they undersold last year compared to any other year.