GOG Connect - Connect your Steam account & get DRM Free versions

[wanderer27]

Thanks for the heads up.

4 more for me, would be nicer to get an email alerting me to the new games rather than having to read it on a forum though.

Are you on their mailing list?

May be a bit late, but I just got an email from them mentioning new games on GOG Connect (they tend to run a bit slow on notifications sometimes).
I think there's generally a five day window or so to grab the games - was actually 18 this time not 17 (couple holdovers from last batch had me confused).


As for downsides . . . it's a free DRM free version of a game you already own . . . you don't have to add it to your Library.
I'm sure you can get them to delete it if you decide you don't want it in your Lib for some reason.

You can only connect to one (Steam) account, don't know about disconnection.

Here's a link to the FAQ about GOG Connect that may answer some of what you're looking for:

https://www.gog.com/connect#faq


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[lupi]

So they only offer games on occasion and not a building list, seems a bit ass backwards.

 

[Sabrewings]

So they only offer games on occasion and not a building list, seems a bit ass backwards.

Probably part of appeasing license holders so they can do it in the first place.

 

[DeathReborn]

Are you on their mailing list?

May be a bit late, but I just got an email from them mentioning new games on GOG Connect (they tend to run a bit slow on notifications sometimes).
I think there's generally a five day window or so to grab the games - was actually 18 this time not 17 (couple holdovers from last batch had me confused).


As for downsides . . . it's a free DRM free version of a game you already own . . . you don't have to add it to your Library.
I'm sure you can get them to delete it if you decide you don't want it in your Lib for some reason.

You can only connect to one (Steam) account, don't know about disconnection.

Here's a link to the FAQ about GOG Connect that may answer some of what you're looking for:

https://www.gog.com/connect#faq


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The email actually arrived today at 16:03 GMT, last time the email arrived 2 days after the claim period ended. Luckily I saw it on another forum and got several games added.

 

[dud]

The connection between my Steam and GoG accounts was easy but found no qualifying games within my Steam library. I refreshed the list but the site stated that it could take days to update.

I have almost 50 games in my library ... is this normal?

 

[wanderer27]

The connection between my Steam and GoG accounts was easy but found no qualifying games within my Steam library. I refreshed the list but the site stated that it could take days to update.

I have almost 50 games in my library ... is this normal?

When you go to the GOG Connect page you can scroll down to see which games they are looking at this round for importing/adding to your GOG Library.
If you don't have any from the current batch then of course there won't be any games added.

If games are found in your Steam Library that are in the current batch, you also need to accept/add them to your GOG Library - it's not an automatic deal (probably a reason for this).


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[lupi]

Not sure if this is the most current thread about this stuff, but just got email from gog about connecting torchlight titles to gog.

 

[Rifter]

That's what I was thinking, then I realized its only two games, I have to share my password with GOG and how good is their security plus GOG is far more likely to close before steam. Having access to steam free DRM for FTL and Xenonauts just doesn't justify the hassle.

Yeah this, whole library sure would be worth it. Few games only it is a joke and not worth the hassle.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I know this thread is almost a year old, but I still don't understand why people would go through all this trouble just to have DRM-free copies of the games they can already play seamlessly from Steam. Aside from games that require a third-party (Don't Starve Together, any Far Cry game, etc.) there's literally ZERO hassle for playing the game. If people are worried about the possibility of Steam shutting down and losing all their games, I can guarantee you if that happened you would see an old-timey lynch mob - complete with pitchforks and torches - getting ready to storm Gabe's home. People have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam accounts and there's no way that Valve would just throw their hands up and say: "oh well, sucks for all of you!".

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I know this thread is almost a year old, but I still don't understand why people would go through all this trouble just to have DRM-free copies of the games they can already play seamlessly from Steam. Aside from games that require a third-party (Don't Starve Together, any Far Cry game, etc.) there's literally ZERO hassle for playing the game. If people are worried about the possibility of Steam shutting down and losing all their games, I can guarantee you if that happened you would see an old-timey lynch mob - complete with pitchforks and torches - getting ready to storm Gabe's home. People have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam accounts and there's no way that Valve would just throw their hands up and say: "oh well, sucks for all of you!".

I agree with everything you said
Steam closing up seems unlikely but what could happen is Gabe leaves the business (or god Forbid the planet), steam gets sold to some scumbag company that charges to download games or just makes steam suck.
I do stand by what I said last year it's far more likely GOG will close up before steam and it's an awful lot of work to get FTL, Xenonaughts and now torchlight added to my GOG library.

 

[RayCathode]

Outside of using the client to download the game you don't need Steam running to play FTL. You can move the game's directory anywhere you want and just run the executable. I don't own Xenonauts so I can't speak to that.

I wouldn't have any faith in not losing your Steam library though. Valve isn't under any obligation to keep things running. I doubt there are more than a handful of games that I'd even think about playing again after I've put them aside so if it did happen it wouldn't be much of a loss to me.

However, it isn't something I'm too worried about happening for quite awhile. I suspect you'll see videogames follow the Netflix, Hulu, etc. path beforehand. As high speed internet becomes more ubiquitous streaming the games will become the norm. Publishers would love that since piracy would be pretty much impossible. Probably shouldn't have dumped all this here since it doesn't have much to do with Gog Connect. hah.

 

[you2]

For myself I use linux when I travel and it is easier for me to deal with drm free games. Specifically if the game does not support linux natively it is easier for me to run it in wine than to setup a wine copy of steam. Yes some steam games dont' require steam and you can just copy the binary but thta becomes guess work on a game by game basis. With gog I can just down't load the game and run it. Also gog tech support is top notch (though sometimes it takes them a few weeks to figure out the issue); steam is a blackhole if you need support.

 

[BFG10K]

I know this thread is almost a year old, but I still don't understand why people would go through all this trouble just to have DRM-free copies of the games they can already play seamlessly from Steam.

What trouble might that be? You log into GOG then enter your Steam login, and the games are added to your library. If that's "trouble" then I'm not sure how you manage to log onto your work PC everyday.

Aside from games that require a third-party (Don't Starve Together, any Far Cry game, etc.) there's literally ZERO hassle for playing the game.

Steam adds plenty of hassles such as offline mode failures, accounts wrongfully locked/banned, authentication issues, startup bloat to launching games, forced auto-patching, a bloated client that's forced to constantly run, corrupted game caches needing re-verification, and the fact that after a Windows reinstall you have no access to your games until you install it.

If people are worried about the possibility of Steam shutting down and losing all their games, I can guarantee you if that happened you would see an old-timey lynch mob - complete with pitchforks and torches - getting ready to storm Gabe's home. People have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam accounts and there's no way that Valve would just throw their hands up and say: "oh well, sucks for all of you!".

If GOG shuts down it doesn't matter given you can backup standalone DRM-free installers for all your games anywhere you please. No lynch mob needed.

Such a thing is called ownership, an apparently alien concept to many. Some people feel ownership and consumer rights don't matter as long as Steam gives them trading cards. "My precious shiny", and all that.

 

[Stg-Flame]

You log into GOG then enter your Steam login, and the games are added to your library.

OR (hear me out) you could log into your Steam account and just play the games. Radical idea, I know, but give it a whirl. Super easy and doesn't require multiple digital clients or logging into one client through another client.

Steam adds plenty of hassles such as offline mode failures, accounts wrongfully locked/banned, authentication issues, startup bloat to launching games, forced auto-patching, a bloated client that's forced to constantly run, corrupted game caches needing re-verification, and the fact that after a Windows reinstall you have no access to your games until you install it.

I've been using Steam for over a decade and the only issue I've had is my games randomly not wanting to play in offline mode. I was without internet for about 10 months and I was able to play Borderlands 2 every single day until randomly it said it was queued for an update, so I had to take my PC to my buddy's house just to get the "update" (sync issue) then go back offline. That happened maybe two or three times in over ten years. The rest I have no idea what you're talking about since I haven't encountered any of those issues, nor have I even heard of them before. I've heard of people complaining about their account being VAC banned but there was always proof provided for the ban or an account being locked because "my brother got on my account and (insert sorry ass excuse here)".

Also, saying that you don't have access to your games after a fresh install is kinda redundant, don't you think? You don't have access to anything after a fresh install until you actually put them back on your PC. That's like saying you don't have access to photoshop until you reinstall it after a fresh OS install. Owning physical copies of the games are no different because you won't have access to them until you actually install the game. For Steam, you install Steam and your entire library is there waiting for you. I'm sure it works the same way with GoG, Origin, Windows Store, Uplay, etc.

If GOG shuts down it doesn't matter given you can backup standalone DRM-free installers for all your games anywhere you please. No lynch mob needed.

Such a thing is called ownership, an apparently alien concept to many. Some people feel ownership and consumer rights don't matter as long as Steam gives them trading cards. "My precious shiny", and all that.

You really need to loosen those straps on that tin-foil hat of yours. Not good for your brain, plus it makes your head sweaty.

With Steam, there's always the possibility (regardless of how small) that the client could one day just not exist. We all know that, but the likelyhood of that happening is so small it's not even worth worrying about and it's definitely not a big enough issue for anyone to run out and buy hundreds of blank DVDs to burn backup installers. Chances are, those discs will corrupt long before the digital distributors go down, especially considering how many people are switching over completely from physical to digital. Hell, there's apps now that let people do their grocery shopping online - it even keeps track of your purchases so you can just go back in and add quantities to your regular stuff (milk, eggs, etc.) the next time you do your shopping. If people are forgoing actually going to grocery stores in lieu of shopping online, it's a safe bet that gamers (who are stereotypically less inclined to go out in the real world and interact with people /joke) are not going to suddenly prefer physical copies.

That being said, I do understand where you're coming from that it's better to be safe than sorry. It would be a good idea for me to build a bomb shelter under my basement just in case, but the chances of actually needed it are about as slim as Steam going offline permanently.

 

[you2]

Actually I'm not sure the chances are as small as you think (steam becoming very unfriendly). It remains to see what happens once Gabe is no longer CEO. Eventually it will happen; whether is it next year or 30 years from now. While Steam might continue to exist it might not be the Steam you champion. Naturally if it is 30 years from now not a big deal (at least for today games); but if it is next week then things might be interesting in a year or two.

 

[paperfist]

I know this thread is almost a year old, but I still don't understand why people would go through all this trouble just to have DRM-free copies of the games they can already play seamlessly from Steam. Aside from games that require a third-party (Don't Starve Together, any Far Cry game, etc.) there's literally ZERO hassle for playing the game. If people are worried about the possibility of Steam shutting down and losing all their games, I can guarantee you if that happened you would see an old-timey lynch mob - complete with pitchforks and torches - getting ready to storm Gabe's home. People have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam accounts and there's no way that Valve would just throw their hands up and say: "oh well, sucks for all of you!".

Well I made the mistake of buying a couple of games off GOG cause they were cheaper. They wouldn't activate on Steam so it ended up being a little bit of a hassle playing them and now if I want to get DLC for them I'm stuck with GOG.

 

[you2]

Yea the negative of gog is the patch system and that you have to manually download and install. gog galaxy is trying to address these issue but it is no where as good as the steam client and has the negative that the downloaded games are not saved in uninstalled format (in case you need to install them manually later).

 

[cronos]

OR (hear me out) you could log into your Steam account and just play the games. Radical idea, I know, but give it a whirl. Super easy and doesn't require multiple digital clients or logging into one client through another client.

Well people still do that too, and keep doing it for the future. It's just that with a couple extra clicks they now have a backup copy of the game, DRM free, just in case.

I'm not sure why you're so confused. It's extremely minimum extra effort, it costs nothing, and after the games got added to your GoG library you don't have to do anything with them if you don't want to. They're just there now.

 

[BFG10K]

OR (hear me out) you could log into your Steam account and just play the games. Radical idea, I know, but give it a whirl. Super easy and doesn't require multiple digital clients or logging into one client through another client.

I don't think you understand what DRM-free means. DRM-free means once you download a game from GOG, you never have to do anything else except double click the EXE to get it to run. No internet access or authentication of any kind is ever needed.

Even downloading the game from GOG doesn't need any client. It's a direct download URL from your browser. Then you get a standalone EXE installer / game that needs zero authentication to run, and can be run from anywhere, anytime.

I've been using Steam for over a decade and the only issue I've had is my games randomly not wanting to play in offline mode. I was without internet for about 10 months and I was able to play Borderlands 2 every single day until randomly it said it was queued for an update, so I had to take my PC to my buddy's house just to get the "update" (sync issue) then go back offline. That happened maybe two or three times in over ten years. The rest I have no idea what you're talking about since I haven't encountered any of those issues, nor have I even heard of them before. I've heard of people complaining about their account being VAC banned but there was always proof provided for the ban or an account being locked because "my brother got on my account and (insert sorry ass excuse here)".

An elementary google search will easily enlighten you.

Steam is bloated garbage that runs in the background. It also adds significant startup times to many games, especially if it wasn't already running when you launch them. The likes of Serious Sam 3 and Call of Duty BLOPs for example take about 30 seconds longer to launch than the cracked versions which don't need Steam. I've personally tested it myself.

Also, saying that you don't have access to your games after a fresh install is kinda redundant, don't you think? You don't have access to anything after a fresh install until you actually put them back on your PC. That's like saying you don't have access to photoshop until you reinstall it after a fresh OS install. Owning physical copies of the games are no different because you won't have access to them until you actually install the game. For Steam, you install Steam and your entire library is there waiting for you. I'm sure it works the same way with GoG, Origin, Windows Store, Uplay, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

Again, I don't think you understand what DRM-free means. DRM-free means you can run the games after an OS install without reinstalling said games or any clients, because they don't need to authenticate against anything. The same applies to cracked physical versions. Since I've banned uPlay and Origin, that makes Steam the abnormal outlier that locks me out of my games until I reinstall it.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I don't think you understand what DRM-free means. DRM-free means once you download a game from GOG, you never have to do anything else except double click the EXE to get it to run. No internet access or authentication of any kind is ever needed.

Even downloading the game from GOG doesn't need any client. It's a direct download URL from your browser. Then you get a standalone EXE installer / game that needs zero authentication to run, and can be run from anywhere, anytime.


An elementary google search will easily enlighten you.

Steam is bloated garbage that runs in the background. It also adds significant startup times to many games, especially if it wasn't already running when you launch them. The likes of Serious Sam 3 and Call of Duty BLOPs for example take about 30 seconds longer to launch than the cracked versions which don't need Steam. I've personally tested it myself.


Again, I don't think you understand what DRM-free means. DRM-free means you can run the games after an OS install without reinstalling said games or any clients, because they don't need to authenticate against anything. The same applies to cracked physical versions. Since I've banned uPlay and Origin, that makes Steam the abnormal outlier that locks me out of my games until I reinstall it.

I think the point is you already have it in steam so effectively it's a double, double click to run the game. Personally I have never had a problem with steam preventing me from doing anything ever. Again GOG's offer is very nice and I don't want to imply it's not a good thing for some. I just never have had a reason to play a steam game in offline mode, I have never had a problem with steams minimal DRM, I've never felt steams DRM has screwed up something on my machine.
I understand others may not be fortunate enough to have reliable internet access or may have had bad experiences with steam. I just don't see a benefit to having 3 games backed up on GOG.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I understand what DRM-free means and I still don't understand why people are so against Steam, but they will buy from another digital distributor for a (usually) higher price just so they can safely double click a game on their desktop without having to double click one extra time to play it through Steam. Not to mention the constant sales, the free games, the automatic updates, the access to guides/mods/discussions, the ability to seamlessly jump into a friend's game, the ability to use voice chat on games that don't support it, etc. etc. etc.

Also, unless you're running a system from 2001, the processes Steam runs in the background have zero impact on your game's performance. To me, the benefits far outweigh any negatives and since Steam has most games available on the market and the fact that most bundles (humble, indie, etc.) come with Steam activation codes, there's very little reason to jump through hoops just to avoid using it.

Regardless, to each their own.