As a digital gaming early adopter nearly 15 years ago, who was a loyal Steam user even before Half Life 2 popularized the service, and a beta participant in the launch of ‘Good Old Games’, I have a particular fondness for both Steam and GoG. This extends to owning copies of many games on both sites, so when GoG announced that they were partnering with Steam and publishers to allow you to add specific games already bought on Steam to your GoG library, I was ecstatic!
Here are the details from GoG:
“Connect your Steam account and grow or jumpstart your GOG.com library.”
“Today, we’re launching a new program called GOG Connect. The premise is simple: connect your Steam account and add your eligible games to your GOG.com library.
Whether you’re checking us out for the first time or have been with us for a while, GOG Connect gets you DRM-free versions of your games, digital extras, and a whole lot of freedom of choice (like whether you go with the GOG Galaxy client or not). It gets you our take on game ownership, and we say: why buy the games more than once?”“Thanks to our awesome partners including Deep Silver, Harebrained Schemes, Jonathan Blow’s Number None, TaleWorlds and more, you can now add more than 20 games to your GOG.com library if you previously purchased them on Steam.”
The full list of games will always be available on connect.gog.com, starting with these and more:
– The Witness
– FTL: Faster Than Light
– The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut
– Galactic Civilizations 3
– Trine Enchanted Edition
– Saints Row 2
– Shadowrun Returns
– The Witcher: Enhanced Edition“While GOG Connect will stick around, the available games will come and go. These are limited-time offers made possible by participating developers and publishers, so stay tuned as we bring new titles onboard in the future (and grab your copies before they go away)!”
“For a bit more library-building, a bunch of our favorite titles will also be discounted up to -85% all week long, including The Witness, Saints Row: The Third, System Shock 2 and more. You can check out all the deals here. The sale will last until June 6, 12:59 PM UTC.”
So in practice this means you need to actively see what games are available to transfer from your Steam library to GoG because they will change – and also that not ALL games that exist on both sites will be available. Regardless of those limitations (likely imposed by publishers), this is a great deal that is nothing but positive for gamers; you get DRM-free games you can back-up (a GoG-specific benefit), the ability to have someone playing a game on Steam and someone else playing the same game from GoG (great for those of us with gamer-kids), and the ability to see games from the awesome sales both sites feature cross-pollenate between your libraries!
Setting up the link is quick and easy, as shown below: