Today two different people sent GOG saves for the new Gabriel Knight game to a GB member who has the Steam version of the game. The GOG saves would not work in the Steam install. So I talked them through the process that usually requires changing the name of the file. You know sequential order etc. Still did not work. Is this something to do with Steam and the control garbage they employ?

I have the old drm laden Longest Journey on disk. The saves from that work with the GOG DRM free download install. This is the first time I've run into this garbage. Am I to assume Steam makes saves incompatible? If so it only goes to re-enforce my refusal to spend a dime with those guys.

The Steam version might have information about save location added to their saves. Or they might have tweaked the game somehow.

It looks like Steam puts its save locations all over the place.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=840657

That could also be a problem -- that the Steam version is expecting the save to be somewhere other than where other game versions put it.

I suspect your first statement is the correct guess. I was told with no way to verify it the saves are in same the location on the hard drive for GOG and Steam. The save was renumbered to be in sequential order but did not appear in the game menu.