Thanks for being civil - I sort of expected another angry, accusatory post, although the posts I've seen from you in the past have seemed more reasonable then not. I liked when your avatar matched your name, lol - it's hard to forget, since it was such a perfect match.

Anyway, [Luke Skywalker], "Nooooooooooo!, such a long post (another of your trademarks). ;p Sorry, I don't think I'm going to respond to all of it or even quote it (no disrespect meant).

I can only guess that you misunderstood why people were wondering whether this was going to be abandoned and don't trust GOG on that issue. The educated guess based on past experience isn't anything GOG has said regarding Connect, but based on the CD key debacle from over a year ago, which I would've thought you understood since you had been posting in there. Anyway, pay particular attention to the last paragraph of that announcement (especially, the last 12 words). I'm not particularly interested in the "facts" in the FAQs, lol, but whether their actions speak louder than their words. They still haven't canceled or said a word about that CD key deal, but everyone knows nothing more is going to come of it. It's now been over a month since anything has happened with Connect...

As for whether or not the problem was on Steam's or GOG's side, I'll just post a few links:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1861
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1868
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1895 <- Sorry, I could've used the post above this and I know you've apologized for your attitude, but I thought your reply was relevant here.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1913 <- No need to read the ultra long quote, mostly by, um, someone, lol, just the reply. ;)

Finally, it's still my and many others' opinion that going this long without any word from GOG (like the CD key thing) is going to have a negative effect on what they were trying to do (attract *and* keep Steam customers coming back), as well as irritating/alienating current customers, especially those who remember the CD key promises. I don't believe this is entitlement (a word that's been misused and overused too often), but, rather, an issue of trust, not to mention a website that has all sorts of problems that don't appear that they'll ever be fixed.

Some posts you might want to look at again after this explanation:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1919
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1922
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gog_connect_8fac8/post1928 <- ...and here we are back at the start of the current discussion between the two of us.

So, yeah, your opinion matters, too. Just relax, though, put down your bow, lol, and try not to jump the gun and assume everyone's asking the same useless question (even if they are, let it go, you can't stop it). :)

I had a half dozen people PM me over time asking me what happened to the guitar avatar and asking me to change it back as they really liked this one. :) The avatar of a skeleton with a bow was an attempt to have an avatar to match the nick, but it was pretty dark and I couldn't find one that I really liked all that much, plus I found it hard to find myself in the forums also where the Gibson SG stands right out. :) The nick 'skeletonbow' goes back to when Half-life originally came out and we were picking nicks for our clan games. We always used the 'skeleton' skins for team play, and I was the master of the crossbow. I find it hard to come up with new names on the spot and everyone was giving me dirty looks for taking so long so I merged the skeletons with the cross bow and voila. It was fairly unimaginative but it stuck. :)

On the surface it would seem to have taken a long time and left us hanging, I agree. But with careful thought over what they said in that announcement they did say it was a long and complicated drawn out process. The "RECLAIM YOUR GAME" method was kind of clunky also, requiring users to do a bunch of manual steps that were difficult to get just right and a bit confusing, for example needing a CDKEY for a Steam game doesn't make much sense, and people trying to use Steam keys rather than the CDKEY on the context menu of a game in their library.

I surmise that in the process of negotiating with publishing partners, along with what they learned from the "RECLAIM YOUR GAME" promotional feature was that in order to handle this sort of thing effectively they would need to design a better software solution if they didn't want to get drowned perpetually in tech support requests costing them a lot of man hours, so they set out to design a better software solution. They may have even had some publishers request they do something to further automate the process perhaps, it would seem to be a reasonable thing anyhow. That's speculation but whatever the path was that led to it, they decided to take an automated approach and aimed to improve the end user experience by creating GOG Connect it would seem, which is overall a sensible approach. Nothing software based is completely without flaws though and it would appear we've witnessed some glitches in the rollout, but that's to be expected IMHO.

As for the radio silence, again I can only speculate from experience as a software engineer and a lot of observation over time that you generally are better off by under-communicating things you're doing rather than over-communicating them with customers/users as things you say become expectations and/or promises in the customer's eyes no matter how much you might state it is not written in stone yet. So companies tend to not tell people things unless they're 100% certain that they are going to do them and then what it is they're going to do, and even then they may hold off because once you tell people those things even when you are certain - they want to know exactly when it will happen and a bunch other things you may not have answers to. That's why some companies don't say anything at all about their up and coming games for example. I wouldn't be surprised if GOG's lack of follow up on that was because they had nothing to say that would be valuable both to the community and not bite them in the ass for speaking too soon or saying too much. We can only know if they tell us however, but they're unlikely to do that for the same reason I suggest above - over-communication of details can be bad too.

Sometimes a need-to-know-basis is good for us all even if we don't like it IMHO.


<continued below>

If the only way they can keep Steam customers here is to continuously give them free games because they don't want to spend any money here, then I'd say they wont be losing anyone of business value if they don't come back. I don't think that's the case really though.

If the next batch of games comes a year from now, they still will not have violated any promises they've made to date. If they said there would be another batch of games in 2 weeks or a month and it didn't show up then they would have made a claim that they didn't keep but that hasn't happened that I'm aware of, or has it? Admittedly I can't keep track of every post a blue makes in the forums. :)

I agree the website has tonnes of bugs/glitches and things that have went on in a bad shape for 2-3 years or more. Some things they have ironed out over time though too (such as the problem I had being treated as if I was in the US instead of Canada for months on end and being told I was the only one even after I got several people to reproduce it, it got fixed eventually by them), but there is certainly a lot of work they have left to do. It would seem the only thing holding back progress is manpower and time. They perpetually have an ongoing list of career postings on the website which either they're hiring multiple people for similar jobs as they can find them, or they're having great difficulty finding people willing to relocate to Poland, or other issues. Hard to say. If they are having issues though, I bet if they opened up an office in the US or Canada they'd have a lineup around the block of people applying. I know a lot of engineers/coders in North America that are firmly planted in their country's soil for example and I'm sure it's like that in other countries around the world too. Who knows though...

Yeah, hard to argue with that, you're right. It's like swatting flies or playing a game of whack-a-mole, and I usually do not get into that normally... but it happens sometimes. :) Speaking of which... I am infested with fruit flies at the moment and while I do use the good old "cider vinegar in a jar with saran wrap over the top and a few holes punched in it" trick to get rid of them, I discovered tonight a bit of cider vinegar in an open mug will attract them to it, and a vacuum cleaner turned on and very slowly approaching them will suck them all up. It doesn't work over the Internet though, I tried. hehehe

On a serious note though I do think GOG means well by all of this and that when they try new things sometimes the execution doesn't come off rock solid in the end, then they learn from that and try to fix it or try something new based on what they've learned and our feedback in the forums and through support etc. I imagine they found some flaws in the system and are re-engineering it to fix them and try to prevent other issues they discovered along the way. If this is the case, then I speculate also that they're holding off from releasing any more games (even if they have some enqueued) until their software backend is more robust and hopefully better tested, with better error messages and handling etc. I hope that's what they're doing anyway.

For me it's not really a big huge deal for me personally though, as I already own the games that are hypothetically going to be available through GOG Connect by nature of how it works, and if I want to play them I can play them right now on Steam so it's of no consequence to me if I have to wait a day/week/month/year to have an opportunity to get copies here on GOG (no matter what they may have said or promised anyone). I have enough faith in them that just knowing this is something they're trying to do gives me enough to believe they'll eventually have it sorted out and we'll get occasional game promos through it. I'm in no rush... quality over quantity any day. In that regard, even though I'm in the camp that is in favour of the Galaxy client - I think that they rushed it out way too early before it was ready to be beta tested originally. I think that due to the large amount of press that The Witcher 3 was getting at the time it gave them a massive opportunity to market their storefront to Steam and other storefront gamers out there and having Galaxy out the door in time for the game's launch was just too much of an opportunity to pass up even if it blew up in their face afterwords. So I think the client not being ready made it seem bad in some people's eyes but they benefited from throwing caution to the wind and riding The Witcher 3 wave at the same time. It's a tough call to make decisions like that but overall despite the problems it has been ok so far for the most part.

I answered about it one or two pages before this one

Your request is most likely stuck, ask them if they could restart the process and check if you can connect

Okay.... So it is beginning to look like GOG connect is dead.

I've never had trouble syncing my Steam and GOG accounts, but i am beginning to wonder if it is even worth checking back, as no new games have been added to the service since the first week.

Would still be nice if GOG added a link to GOG connect on their store page though. Might as well let people know that the service exists instead of hiding it away like a big secret.

Ahhh, I'm blind! The text, the text! ;)

I'd like to reply to more of what you said, but I just can't for health reasons. I enjoyed the story of your nick and avatar and your creative use of a vacuum cleaner, lol.

The CD key thing, while it worked with some Steam CD keys, was really meant for physical copies of games, such as my long suffering Nox and others, sitting there on a real life shelf. It wouldn't have been complicated for the user, just click the "Reclaim your Games" button (you know, right next to the "GOG Connect" button, lol), enter the key from your box and everything's good. GOG Connect isn't the new improved version of Reclaim your Games, it's a different thing altogether.

In light of that, I'll post the last paragraph of "Reclaim your Games" with some emphasis added: This is just the start of something much bigger. We plan to add more titles to the list in the future - it's a long and complicated process that involves negotiating with multiple parties and a scavenger hunt to retrieve forgotten key-databases - but then, we are on a mission here, we'll do whatever it takes.

That, to me, is a promise broken. The very *least* they could've done would've been to let people know it wasn't going to work as soon as *they* knew. If they *still* don't know (everyone else does), they could say it's on hold, indefinitely, and re-announce it whenever they're *really* ready. They've said nothing and, almost ironically, lol, it was announced April 2, 2015 (just 1 day...).

As far as radio silence and under-communicating, I'd agree on certain things, but not this. They don't need to commit to anything, other than the fact that this *isn't* dead (say it here, not some social site - that *is* need to know) and keep communicating with us. When I've seen them break a promise (even if I hadn't, really), I expect something, *anything* that lets me know this hasn't failed like the CD key thing - that was a LOT of radio silence (still silent, even). You know, Starbound went the radio silence route (or just didn't care) for a long time and lost/pissed off a lot of potential customers. I was surprised that was one of the "trustworthy" games GOG was curating - totally lost my trust for "InDev" on the first day with that being part of the premiere of their "InDev".

I'm not in a big hurry, either (got plenty of games), but I prefer DRM-free for several reasons (and can't afford to buy games several times) - I won't touch anything with a virus like SecuROM on it (I bought a "DRM-free" game on Amazon and didn't know it really had SecuROM until it was too late - complained like hell to them), I don't like being forced to run a client for most of my games (I may not mind, but I don't like being forced) and I prefer DRM-free just for the principle of it. So, again, no hurry

As for Steam customers, I have to disagree. As I said, some of them have a lot of hate for GOG, while barely knowing what GOG is. Either way, if they decide to try GOG because they don't want to buy games over again, then see nothing for over a month (assuming they hung around that long), it's going to be hard to trust GOG. With so many different things that've happened (CD keys, website problems, Galaxy, etc - one trader I knew who once preferred GOG told me he liked Steam's client for various reasons and thought Galaxy *might* be ready in several years).

Gah, you've infected me with long posting! ;)

In any case the Steam users have spoken and agree with me, lol. As I said previously: Any Steam customers who came here because of this promo have anything to add? Do you agree (if you do, you're probably not here to say so, lol)? :)

Ok, you're right. :)

Yes,

I am a Steam user who would like to disagree with you.

My Steam account has 27 games.
My GOG account has 36 games.

More than 20 games have been bought by me on both sites, so i have no overwhelming love of one service over the other, and i consider myself to be neutral. (I'm sure that GOG staff can verify my claim now that they can snoop through my Steam library at will, which is the main reason why GOG connect was created to begin with: data farming.)

If i mention GOG on Steam forums, nobody bats an eyelid, and i see no flaming or arguments at all.
However, If i mention Steam here on GOG forums, i get a bunch of the GOG elitists shouting at me followed by a storm of negative rep because everyone is so butt-hurt.

"DOWN WITH DRM!"
"STEAM IS AN EVIL MONEY-GRABBING BUNCH OF ******"
"STEAM AND IT'S DRM SHOULD BURN IN HELL!"
"I WOULD NEVER BUY STEAM TRASH!"

That's all i ever hear when i mention Steam anywhere on GOG forums, so why would Steam-only users feel the need to open a future GOG account, when the community is so dead set against them?
Not exactly a warm welcome to future customers, is it?

I pretty much agree with you, except that I would bet at least 99% of all gamers don't even visit either forum.

I think you misunderstood - you clearly didn't join GOG for this promo. So I'm still waiting. ;)

I've seen hate on both sides...
Lol!

Thanks for your help. Since I successfully connected at the very beginning of the 'GOG Connect' unveiling, it's possible that some games have been added since then that it didn't detect (though none have been added recently). So I'll change the settings and try one more time.

Seems it was only kind of a marketing stunt to connect (hence the name) our gog accounts with our steam accounts (which is valuable information for certain groups). As the timeframe at which any games were connectable was rather short and now there is no announcement anymore ... well, time will tell.

does steam offer the same service?

Nope.

Thank you