I am well aware of how it works, I don't feel they count since they were just added as a promotion for the new MoO and are part of the 'collector's edition'.

Absolutely, that's a perfectly valid opinion. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

I certainly hope not. I'm also hoping Master of Orion was an exception. Yes, the temporary thing will no doubt stay but the only way to take advantage of the MOO GOG connect was to buy the game on release at full price because buying/preordering Master of Orion was the only way to get the games involved on Steam.

If GOG connect turns into a full price release promo that'd be very disappointing.

That's not what I meant. What I meant is that games will show up periodically from time to time when a publisher feels like doing it, because it's their game so they get to decide if, when and how they're going to offer it. This is something that never even existed before. You bought your game on Steam -> then you own it on Steam, end of story. You bought your game on GOG -> then you own it on GOG, end of story. Publishers never owed anyone anything such as a free copy on GOG, Humble, the dark side of the moon, or wherever, and in general you never had a way to get a free copy of a game you bought on one store from another store except in rare special case scenarios such as writing to the publisher of the Black Mirror games informally as they gave Steam keys for their games to people who bought them from ShinyLoot or other stores, simply from providing proof of purchase. Later, they offered GOG keys as well. I don't know if they still do or not as it was an informal thing where you emailed the guy and he'd get back to you.

Point is, it is still quite uncommon for any publisher to offer customers a way to redeem a license for their game on a different store/platform from where they purchased it, and any ability to do that at all whatsoever period is an unexpected bonus that nobody is automatically entitled to simply because they bought a game somewhere at some point in time. When you go buy a game, you're ultimately going in knowing full well "I own this on Steam and I know that, and that's all I get" or ditto for GOG or wherever.

So it is a kind act for publishers to offer this kind of thing to anyone at all ever under any circumstances, whether they do it in an ongoing permanent basis, or for a limited time or limited quantity, whether they do it out of the blue for a week or so not tied to anything, or they decide to make the offer available for a limited time to promote something else, such as a new game or a sale, or to otherwise draw attention to something for the purposes of marketing or whatever. They're doing something that they aren't obligated to do, to which nobody had them offer it before, and people are getting a limited time opportunity to get a free benefit that they wouldn't have ever been offered otherwise and would have been content and quiet and happy about as-is.

But instead, the publisher - through GOG - offers a kind free offering they're not obligated to offer, whether they are doing so as a promotion of something else or not - and what is the result? A bunch of people whine and complain and bitch about it because it isn't good enough, it isn't for long enough, they weren't notified about it by having an employee from the company knock on their door at home on a Saturday afternoon and offer them a special unlimted offer and a glass of free lemonade and maybe a foot massage to go with it.

It doesn't really matter a rats ass how they go about offering it really, it's free and nobody is entitled to it so they can take it or leave it. All of the constant whining about this in the forums is pure unadulterated spoiled rotten entitlement mentality as far as I'm concerned and it is tiring seeing that all of the time. Not pointing any fingers at any specific individuals, just the entire phenomenon of it that permeates society at many levels that go beyond GOG or even gaming itself.

The general rule by observation seems to be that when someone gives you something for free - tell them how it is not good enough, tell them what sucks about it, tell them how they suck for not giving you more or making it better, how it is unfair that they gave you an opportunity to get something for free because it wasn't big enough, better enough, the offer didn't last long enough, or some other self-centred view that only cares about the self at the expense of the one doing the act of kindness (if not at the expense of everyone else).

I hope companies read all the crap in the forums and think to themselves "Hrm, we were going to offer some games for free but judging by all of the negative comments from self-entitled thankless people out there who would be lining up to backlash against us for our kind act, you know what, lets just not even bother, they're content and quiet enough for the time being not even knowing, so let's not do it and just not tell them and they wont even know the difference. Yep, that beats doing something nice and having people bitch us out for it."

I greatly dislike entitlement mentality and the whole dark cloud of negative energy that surrounds it in general, but when it is over something unexpectedly being offered for free by someone or some company, it's even worse. Society is going to hell in a handbasket.

You get me *sniff*.

Clearly, but there was no entitlement in my post whatsoever. I'm not *expecting* devs to give me anything, but that doesn't mean I don't get to express my wishes/hopes for a feature like that.

Imo ideally GOG Connect becomes a de facto habit of developers x years after release (with accompanying GOG releases of course). That way even the games adamant about DRM could get into a habit of eventually releasing their games on GOG once the initial sales waves go down (yes, less interesting for GOG than a day 1 release but we're not going to be rid of DRM any time soon).

What I'm much less interested in is for this system to become a day 1/full release price 'bonus'-only, where you can only end up getting it on both portals if you buy it for full price.

Actually, on a sidenote, this has been extremely common for a while now already, because in many places you were capable of buying both a DRM-Free version *and* a Steam key of games. Not on GOG of course but that's because of their own decisions. It's still rare to see games for sale with GOG keys and if rumors hold true they're adamant about their keys not being sold with Steam keys (on 3rd party sites).

I can understand *why*, because it would devalue sales on their own platform since they don't want to offer Steam keys with their sales here. But that's why, when it comes to GOG it's exceedingly rare to get a GOG purchase + other store. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen regularly however.

It's a real shame too because it would be ideal if a purchase of a game ended up with a Steam version + GOG version as 'the big two' so to say. Steam since that's where the bulk of the people are and GOG instead of the standalone (non-gog) 'DRM-Free' edition. (with Steam keys + GOG connect going both ways regardless of where the purchase is made).

I hope that it ends up providing more offers than that also, but even if it doesn't and ends up doing what you've said above, it is still better than what existed before Connect which was simply the same thing you mention above minus the possibility of a free copy of possibly some earlier game in a series or whatnot. Would be cool to see more than that, but it's still cool anyway. Full disclosure: I haven't been able to redeem a single game through Connect yet BTW.

From a business perspective I can understand why GOG wouldn't want to do the reverse and provide GOG keys for Humble Bundle etc. to sell along with a Steam key or whatnot (if that's even up to GOG, not sure it might be publishers decision perhaps). GOG wants to grow their own brand and they're pretty much the most successful of the smaller game distributors in doing so so far. I think it's natural for them to do things in such a way that promotes their own brand and not the competition. I believe that if GOG was to provide keys and bundle sites got a hold of them for double-bundling keys with games that what would happen is the games would be sold at the rock-bottom bundle prices giving GOG the least amount of profit out of the deal, by volume people would redeem their Steam keys moreso than the GOG keys, and a new market would spring up for selling unused GOG keys, putting the largest part of the profit margin for a sold game into a 2 3rd parties' pockets (bundle site and the person reselling them back to G2A or wherever), which in turn would result in more lost sales of those games for GOG on top of the reduced profits for selling them to 3rd parties to begin with.

It's probably a lot more complex than what any of us realize though so we can only make speculative hypotheses like this for the most part. Iwi has previously spoken a bit about his views of the dilution in the industry though, I can't remember his exact phrasing but it suggested to me that GOG wasn't going to go down the same route that other parts of the industry have such as the bundle sites, and that they think that is bad for business.

We of course think it is great to a degree - at least on the surface, because we get cheap games and immediate gratification, but the concerns seemed to be that the long term costs of that is harmful to the industry as a whole, and ultimately shapes what will happen down the line and that it wont necessarily be good for consumers.

Look at the trends with certain game companies in the last few years. Extreme amounts of nickel and dime DLC and microtransactions, subscriptions, and now companies like Origin and Sony are trying to offer online game rental services under the guise of "streaming". It's all so they can try to exercise control and put restrictions in place to drive up profit and milk it for what it's worth partly driven by the oversaturated market and rock bottom prices I believe.

I think a company like GOG to be competitive needs to do certain things differently than what they see around them in order to survive. Copy the good practices, and steer clear of the bad. I think that's what really gives them their value-add proposition in the end.

Bringing it back to the original topic though, I think that we'll see more publishers make offers for games through this service over time as GOG becomes more popular and the potential demand increases naturally. The one thing that could be a concern is people reselling license keys because they own the game on Steam already and didn't really want it here, but did want a free copy to gift or giveaway. From what I understand, that isn't possible with Connect, it redeems direct to your account or not at all, so the risk of dilution via duplicate licenses floating around is pretty low. I think GOG has quite a way to grow yet before they're big enough to have much impact with negotiating cards on that though too.

I don't get it. Why was pre-ordering/buying the new game the only way to use GOG Coneect for the old games?

They weren't available on Steam till the new game came out

So why are the Steam reviews from february? Or were they made available when the new game entered early access? And did you only get them when you bought the new game? Or could you buy them as single games as well?