I don't think this is the case at all. At least for me, the DRM-free aspect is the number 1 reason to use Connect. In the past, I bought from GOG the games I already had on Steam just for getting a DRM-free copy (Also I wanted to support GOG). So it's nice to see that GOG has created an alternative way with Connect. Also not all the games included are bundled games. See The Witness, Kona, Galactic Civilizations 3, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut (As far as I know only the first 2 Van Helsing games are bundled before), Unreal Games...

With Connect gog gets marketing, not money. They are probably losing money with connect. If you want to support them in a real manner, buy the games again here. If you bought games you already had then money isn't a problem for you.

My answer is not no games, it's:
"YOUR ACCOUNTS ARE BEING CONNECTED
Due to exceedingly high demand, processing the queue may take up to several days. Don't worry, you will be able to add your games regardless of the wait. You can close this page now. Return later to manually add the games to your library."

All I want is to know what's the problem.
Heck keep the games, but I just want answers!
I know it might seem silly to others but that's the person I'm, I want some sort of reply as to why I can't connect.
P.S: My steam has always been public.

The forums are full of answers, repeated 50000 times. That's the problem, everyone wants answers and nobody wants to read the existing answers, they just want to ask the same already-answered-dozens-of-times questions over and over and over and rant and rave about it.

Once again... the short version for people who choose not to read what has been stated zillions of times already:

1) There are zero games available currently on offer through GOG Connect, so nobody can currently get anything. The initial 2 limited-time promotions have already ended as stated in the first post by GOG.

2) The Steam API has a maximum number of connections to their service per day that are allowed. Going over this limit results in inability to connect again until the next day. With the millions of GOG users using the website every day, it's not difficult for this limit to be reached and there is absolutely nothing GOG can do about it because they do not control Steam's terms of service. This means that some people will no doubt be given an error message that the service is unavailable or similar.


It's the same answer when someone asks again tomorrow, the day after, and probably every day going forward that GOG continues to provide the service because they don't control the limits that Steam imposes on using their API, so therefore they can't control whether or not every single GOG user will be able to get through.


Due to the high demand this has apparently been having, and the inability to control quality of service due to GOG not owning Steam, I wouldn't be surprised if GOG pulls the plug on this feature in the future due to all of the problems people report daily about it unless they can come up with some other way to limit it to a certain number of people per day without making everyone have a panic attack.

There's your answer there. GOG should own Steam.

Shouldn't GOG at least do something like this, before checking Steam? :P

if gogconnect_games=0 then inform_user="Sorry, no games are available to connect at this moment." else ...
...
if steam_daily_connections>X then inform_user="Sorry, max available Steam connections reached by users. Try again tomorrow." else ...
...

P.S: sorry for my coding examples..

Absolutely.

I don't think that was not handled very well, TBH. Trickling the promotions over time would keep everyone's attention on the feature for longer, right now the lack of any real updates or announcements gets them questioning if GOG has decided to cancel the program.

It's up to the developers how they want to promote their games. What are the consequences to the way it was done? Multitudes of people got free copies of games they owned on Steam - mission accomplished. People question everything GOG does no matter what it is or how they do it. There's always someone out there that thinks there is some evil conspiracy to screw them over going on. All a company like GOG can do is to continue to try to be the best they can by providing new products, services, features, listening to feedback and trying their best to adapt to it where it makes sense to.

They're doing pretty good if you ask me, and there's zero consequence to people thinking the program has been cancelled really. In another day/week/month when they add new games to it and people see how it works, some fraction of them will clue in, and a brand new batch of people who are uninformed will make invalid assumptions about it to keep the confusion/questioning happening.

Rinse, lather, repeat. :)

Making people think the right thing constantly is impossible, people read between the lines, make invalid assumptions, guess, hypothesize, etc. because of the natural consequence of being human. The constant factor, is that some people will make invalid assumptions and learn later that they were wrong - or perhaps even not learn that but still be wrong. It's one thing we can rely upon like clockwork. :)

I got "No Eligible Games Found", even though I synced on the first day and got the "success, you are done here but it might take a while to process" text.

It didn't occur to me to keep checking back, I though once synced it will be automatic to unlock the games, but I guess you had to refresh the list until it showed them.

I thought after the Steam sale, we would see new titles, but apparently I was wrong :S

Batman says - You will!

lol after the steam sale leaves alot of time for t to happen so yer predictification may still bear fruit

You really missing the point with 1.
1) It's not about there being no games, it's about not connecting (I know there are no games now I just want to connect)

Now with 2 you are more to the point but still off by a bit
2) Millions don't try to use the service daily because there are no games(see 1)
I tried at different times of the day different days
I remember one day you said you checked and you did connect (yes I know you got no eligible games message but at least you CONNECTED) when I tried BEFORE you(someone else? but I think you) and didn't CONNECT

To sum up:
So really both answers don't apply to me because
1. No games dosen't mean you can't connect (proven by you)
2. No high demand right now so they should by logic be able to process my request this days, and when someone who tries to connect after me can means that's not the issue (proven by you)
************************************************************************************************************** ******************

Now update:
Today I got a mail with a way to redeem the games I should have been able to at the initial release (good job GOG)
But no word as to why I can't connect

No, I agree that they should improve the handling of error conditions. A good UI should never throw errors at a user unless it is absolutely necessary, and if it does then generally speaking it should hide technical details and give a user friendly response. So for example right now _everyone_ should probably see simply a positive centric message like "We will be making new games available in the future subject to availability from our partnering game publishers. Currently there are no games available through this special offer however we will make announcements when new games become available." or words to that effect. The back end should be disconnected from Steam, and nobody should get any errors or even know what is happening in the background or if it is even trying to connect since there is no real reason for it to connect unless there are actually game offers on display (IMHO).

This solves problem 1 of not knowing about why it doesn't connect, because the only reason someone doesn't know why it has trouble connecting is that it's trying to do something and it's telling them - both technical details nobody needs to even know. If there is actually connections to anything going on in the background and errors occuring, that's something to spit into a log file and email an admin to look into and not display errors to a user that then wants to know WTF is happening.

When the service is actually active and has games available, they should optimize the service to reduce the number of connections as much as possible due to the Steam API's limitations. No user should be able to reload the page 100 times to get through and burn through that many Steam API requests. They should queue user interest and if a user reloads or repeats the request on the same account from any computer or browser while one is in the queue, it should ignore multiple requests either entirely, or calculate from the current request rate a projected request rate for the day to calculate whether there might be spare unused requests at the end of the day, and in tight loads refuse more than one attempt per day (or longer) from one user, while if the queue and prediction is small - to perhaps allow more than one request from a user in a day in case they've added a game to their Steam account since the last poll. However, they should also cache results from previous queries to Steam for that user and reuse that data for some time rather than re-polling Steam. There are many other optimizations that could be done, and they may actually be doing some or all of this already for all I know.

I look at this from an engineering perspective. The problem isn't that users can't connect, it is that the underlying back end should be doing things in as optimal a manner as possible to minimize problems, reduce connections and traffic to Steam, reduce/eliminate user initiated abuse such as pounding on reload or using bots to hammer GOG's connect web page, etc. and they should minimize any error messages or other negative anger-inducing screens shown to users. Users only need to see whether the service has games to offer at the moment or not, and if not, do nothing and show a friendly message of what might come in the future. If there is something there now, then allow them to link their account to Steam if it isn't already and make sure they know that due to technical requirements of the Steam API they must make their Steam profile public in order for the service to work. If the system is not under load, process it in real-time and inform the user when the information is available about what games they have and whether they are elligible - there should be a time limit on that of maybe 30-60 seconds or so, and if that can't be met either due to GOG server load, Steam server load or API throttling, or some other errors, it should display a message like "Thank you for using GOG Connect, we will send you a message when your results are processed. Would you prefer to be sent a private message on GOG chat, or a private email message [enter details below]?"

They may need to massage the message etc. to the technical details of the situation, may have to include "Your request may take n hours/days for processing", and/or other special handling with the goal being to maximize the end user experience as much as is technically possible while reducing bad experience, user seen error messages etc.

Users do not like errors, users do not like being told "no" or seeing a GOG bear etc. That should all be avoided as much as possible. If all of what I say can be and is done, then all the debates above more or less become a moot point.


Question: How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?