GOG has quietly killed off its Steam-import service
GOG Connect had been idle for years, but now it's disconnected.
If you've been champing at the bit for the return of GOG Connect, the service that allowed you to import selected games from your Steam library over to your GOG collection, then I've got some bad news. GOG has finally and quietly retired the service, with the URL now redirecting users to the store's front page.
Eagle-eyed Reddit users began to notice the redirect around a week ago, even though the page was still accessible as recently as January 1, but the lack of an official announcement meant it was hard to be sure if the service was gone for good. However, a GOG spokesperson tells PCG that they "can confirm that GOG Connect is no longer supported and is removed from [GOG's] page".
It's sad news, but not at all surprising. I don't even remember the last time the service had games available (its offerings were always time-limited, giving players a brief window to import the available games if they owned them on Steam), and the last time it was mentioned as a going concern on our own site was during a Chinese New Year sale several years ago. That sentiment was echoed by GOG, which told us that "for a long time nothing really happened there, so we've decided to shut it down".
Rather than straight-up adding your Steam games to your GOG library—which I have to imagine was always a difficult thing to cajole publishers into allowing—players are now encouraged to "connect various platforms and create their own games library" via GOG Galaxy, the platform's own launcher, which attempts the unenviable task of corralling your various games libraries into one application.
Still, it's not quite the same thing as getting full-fat, DRM-free extra copies of your Steam games, so it's a shame to see GOG Connect go quietly into that good night, even if it had been on life support for a few years now.