With the new GOG summer sale page I saw that new games were added to GOG connect. I've always appreciated GOG's generous connect feature which has given me quite a few GOG copies of my already owned Steam games. Up until today, I have never had to have my Steam Profile set to anything in particular to access free copies of games. Connect has always worked fine and has always allowed me to redeem applicable Steam games that it was offering from my Steam library.

Today I go to redeem two new Connect items, for me personally those are Grim Dawn and Banner Saga, but now its telling me that my Steam Profile must be set to "Public" and then for me to come back in two hours and try again. I have to say this is VERY disappointing. I understand that essentially they are doing a generous service with their GOG Connect and that they don't have to do this kind of thing at all, however I'm annoyed that they are now requiring me to set my Steam Profile to Public. Taking into consideration recent issues such as GOG's forcing a GOG profile feature with Public settings forced on upon release this is just as upsetting to me. I'm not even concerned at this point with trying to claim free games. What I'm annoyed with is the change in behavior. They are now requiring GOG customers to open up their Steam Profiles to the Public setting in order to gain access to GOG Connect titles. This is not technically coercion but its a passively rude practice and manipulative.

They used to provide the free connect games with no apparent strings attached and apparently no issues. Now that has changed and the manner in which they are doing it is disappointing to me. It used to be a generous gift and a nice "thank you" to their customer's patronage but now the tone has changed to one of withholding a reward because of an individual's rightful desire to protect their privacy. The behaviors or practices, the in between the lines kind of language, has changed into something increasingly disingenuous and in my opinion kind of shady. Perhaps this will change but this comes off as a slight to customers.

Again, at this point I don't even want free games and that's not what I'm speaking to. I'm upset with some of these new behaviors and business decisions coming from GOG lately. Has anyone else noticed this or are there any discussions on this subject at all on the GOG forums? I hope this is something they will consider changing. Again, not so much for access to freely gifted games but out of the strong desire to see GOG remain a trustworthy, noninvasive, DRM free, customer-centric and protecting company. I would like to see GOG remain set apart from other gaming distributing companies and not morph into them. I hope they will maintain what they said they set out to be because right now these these little actions feels pretty underhanded and cause GOG and CD Projekt Red to loose points with me.

Wasn't it was always like that?

Edit: here's a snapshot of the connect page from two years ago https://web.archive.org/web/20160603060409/www.gog.com/connect and it says exactly the same thing - you have to make your steam profile public

I think it is not entirely GOG's fault as I read recently something about Steam's profiles are going to be "more secure'. Maybe this note caused GOG Connect to set some new requirements.

If the default privacy that Steam forced on to you, without your apparent knowledge, is that important to you, you can always make your profile public, refresh Connect (might take a while), get your games, then go back to your private settings.
I strongly suspect nothing noteworthy will happen to your profile information during that brief window.

Besides the fact that yes, this has been the case ever since the Connect program began, you can always set it to profile, have GOG scan your library via the Connect page, import whatever's eligible, then set your Steam profile back to "private" once you're done. Or, you know, don't use Connect.

And it's not so much GOG's stance on privacy that's changed (I don't think they've ever really had an official public stance on privacy, unless you count whatever's stated in their various policy documents on the support site, which I don't), so much as the general public is finally getting more concerned about online privacy. But, as is so often the case, there will probably be a gross overcorrection -- from "Eh, who cares who can see what I do online? It's fine," to "Oh my wild-eyed, bearded god, someone can see that there are games in my account! Never mind that there's no visible info that could, even in the wildest fever dream, be used to identify me, personally -- I demand 100% privacy!"

You know what would be cool? Reverse gog connect! With the crazy amount of outdated/unsupported/feature-stripped games sold here, it would be fair if gog customers got some compensation by having Steam keys to said outdated/unsupported/feature-stripped games offered to them.

In fact, the developer of Aragami apparently thinks that this is how Connect works. He said in a recent Steam forum post that he'll be "asking about GOG Connect to let GOG users get access to the level editor". So he thinks that redeeming the game via Connect would get gog users access to the Steam version (which has the level editor), when in fact it is only Steam users that would get to enjoy the additional benefit of a feature-stripped DRM-free version as a reward for not buying from gog.

A bit unfair, isn't it? The solution is obvious: Introduce reverse gog Connect!

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I think GOG Disconnect has always been available under "sign out".

"To use GOG Connect and reclaim your Steam games on GOG, you have to set your Steam profile to public - that was always the case as we need to connect with your Steam account through Steam API and check if you're eligible to get access to the free copy of the game on GOG. The recent change on Steam was that parts of your privacy account settings there were changed from public to private - that's why previously GOG Connect was working for you without any actions required from your end."

eclook thanks for the response and for the help. I'm still a bit confused though. I'm confused by: "The recent change on Steam was that parts of your privacy account settings there were changed from public to private - that's why previously GOG Connect was working for you without any actions required from your end." My Steam profile has always been set to private and viewable only to friends. That's never changed to my knowledge for 13 years and GOG connect always worked without requiring me to change my Private setting to Public. I wonder what parts changed as mentioned in that quote. Why do I have to now set it to Public? Perhaps that's a question for Steam.

That statement seems to infer that even though I've always had my Steam profile set to private, elements of it were not hidden to whatever GOG Connect needs to access my Steam library and to properly check for applicable games.(Again, Connect always worked while my Steam Profile was set to Private) Now apparently those elements that GOG Connect needs are now slaved to Steam's Public setting. What I don't understand is the "why" of that? Why can't it still be configured in such a way that I can maintain my Private setting on my Steam Profile and still have GOG Connect work?

It always required it to be set to public. AFAIK the only change is that Steam changed the default setting to private recently.
Because GOG can only view the information you make public. If you don't let them see what games you have then they can't give you GOG copies. I'm not sure what you're confused about.

Because GOG Connect prior to today used to successfully work with my Steam Profile set to Private which has been unchanged for years. That's why I'm confused. It used to work then but for it to work now I'm told I have to set my Steam profile to Public. Something has changed and it must be something under the surface and maybe on Steam's end.

Its not about me letting them see anything. Obviously before recently, GOG Connect could see whatever it is it needed to see to function because GOG connect always worked even with my Steam profile set to private. Something has apparently changed on Steam's end that is now hiding whatever it is that GOG Connect needs to see. People keep saying GOG Connect always needed a Steam user's profile to be set to Public though I've never had it set to Public for the thirteen years I've used Steam as far as I know and yet Connect always worked. Perhaps Steam did something to make users safer by hiding what apparently must have been available information that is now properly hidden within the Private setting.

It is like blaming GOG because Steam changed their privacy settings because of GDPR.

:D