Migrating from the Bethesda Launcher to Steam isn’t going smoothly for some

The Bethesda launcher is closing its doors on May 11th, which means players need to migrate any games they own on the platform to their new home on Steam. It turns out that the process isn’t going well for some players, however, with reports of deluxe editions and DLCs going mission, and others receiving outright errors.

When attempting to link accounts, several users say they receive an error that reads, “Account linking failed. Please retry or contact Customer Support for assistance.” A response from the Bethesda Support account suggests the issue may arise when attempting to link a Bethesda account to a Steam account that already has a Bethesda account attached.

As reported by FanByte, other users say that despite owning the Deluxe Edition of Rage 2, only the Standard Edition of the game appeared in their Steam library after migration, and that Doom Eternal looked to move over without its DLC. Bethesda support say in both instances that installing the game on Steam should make the relevant DLC content appear, although that solution doesn’t seem to work for everyone.

I’m torn on the demise of the Bethesda Launcher. It was bad, and so it’s good that I won’t have to use it anymore, but it would have been better if it had been good and remain open. Its closure is a direct example of how consolidation – Microsoft bought Bethesda in 2020 – leads to less competition.

If you need to migrate your own collection, you can find how out to transfer games between platforms in our own guide. If it doesn’t work as intended, you’ll likely need to file a support ticket here.