GOG officially ends its Steam-import Connect service after years of inactivity
"For a long time nothing really happened there".
GOG's Connect service, which let users grab a free copy of a game they already owned on Steam to add their GOG library, is officially no more.
Launched in 2016, GOG Connect was a neat proposition on paper, allowing users to link their GOG and Steam accounts and then get a duplicate, DRM-free version of a game they'd already purchased on Valve's platform over on GOG.
In practice, though, it was all a bit restrictive, with GOG only offering a very limited selection of eligible games - and even those could only be added to a user's GOG library within a very strict timeframe for contractual reasons. Perhaps unsurprisingly, support for the service slowly dwindled and GOG Connect has now been inactive (if not officially dead) for years.
Hints that GOG might finally have pulled the plug on Connect emerged last week when posters on the GOG subreddit noticed the retailer's Connect page had quietly vanished from its site, with the previous URL redirecting to its homepage.
Now though, in a statement to PC Gamer, GOG has made Connect's demise official, confirming the service is "no longer supported". As to the why, it's not much of a surprise. "For a long time nothing really happened there," it said, "so we've decided to shut it down".
While GOG Connect is no more, GOG's Galaxy client - which takes a different approach to consolidating libraries across different services - is alive and well. This lets users connect various storefront accounts so all owned games are viewable and launchable in one place.