By Jim Rossignol on June 17th, 2008 at 6:53 pm.
Stardock’s digital distribution platform, Impulse, goes live today. I know what you’re thinking, but Epic Games, THQ, AVG, iolo, Gas Powered Games, Hothead Games, Ironclad Games, Meridian4 have apparently signed up to the platform. Notable games on there include Sins Of A Solar Empire, Unreal Tournament III, Gal Civ, and Space Rangers 2. No, Space Rangers 2 was awesome, go play it. Details below.
“Impulse is a platform first, a store second,” said Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock Corp. “Our primary objective with Impulse is to address the issues users have with their Windows experience today. That includes being able to boot up a new PC, install Impulse, and then be able to press a button and have it install all of your software and games with one click.”
To this end, Stardock has been working with major PC game publishers and software developers to bring as many titles onto Impulse over the next several months. For developers and publishers, Impulse supports localized currencies, custom pricing models for affiliates, exclusive store items on a per-partner basis, publisher controlled availability, and more. For consumers, Impulse is expected to have the largest selection of digitally-available software on the market within its first year of operation. Currently Impulse features more than 100 games and software applications.
The most interesting bit of the announcement, however, is likely this: “Companies and individuals will be able to distribute their own branded version of Impulse starting in mid-August, and every time a user creates an account with an affiliated distributor, that distributor will receive a percentage of the gross revenue of any future purchases.” That’s a pretty good hook for those looking to make a move on the digital distribution arena.
17/06/2008 at 20:08 Chris Evans says:
Finally a Steam rival?
17/06/2008 at 20:09 Wolfman says:
Space Rangers 2 is indeed awsome.
-wolfman
17/06/2008 at 20:09 Anonymous says:
Didn’t they already have one? Or does the thing I bought the Gal Civ games, Sins, Space Rangers 2 & Sword of the Stars through not count as digital distribution?
17/06/2008 at 20:11 fluffy bunny says:
OMG! Space Rangers 2: Reboot!
Oh no! Availability: US and Canada only!
17/06/2008 at 20:28 cHeal says:
Would the products I purchase be owned by me in a purely digital sense, as is the case with Steam or is there any chance of them providing some form of hard copy (product or proof) upon request?
17/06/2008 at 20:32 John P (Katsumoto) says:
@ Fluffy: Really? Fucks sake, i was about to install this just for that! Looks like they’ve built in Steam’s greatest failing from the off then!
17/06/2008 at 20:48 SuperNashwan says:
So, clever people of RPS, why would publishers use this brand new, untested “platform” instead of (or as well as) Steam? And why would I buy off this instead of Steam when I’ve already got Steam, by necessity, permanently installed with a load of games?
17/06/2008 at 20:51 Pidesco says:
Perhaps it’s better. And it’s “indier.”
17/06/2008 at 20:54 Fumarole says:
Well I must say they’ve certainly chosen an appropriate name, if my past purchases via Steam are any indication of the general population’s habits.
17/06/2008 at 20:56 muteh says:
Because monopolies are bad. It’s not in publishers’ interests for there to only be one viable online platform. Why don’t music publishers only use itunes?
17/06/2008 at 20:57 cyrenic says:
@SuperNashwan
Also, this way Stardock doesn’t have to pay Valve when they sell their own games, and they probably get a cut from people that sell through it as well. Revenue!
17/06/2008 at 21:01 Scandalon says:
YADDS… I’ll stick w/ Steam just because it’s established and let the others fight it out.
17/06/2008 at 21:22 FodderCannon says:
Edit: Nevermind, solved it.
17/06/2008 at 21:23 yutt says:
Competition is good.
17/06/2008 at 21:30 liquidindian says:
Hmm. They’re offering the GalCiv 2 pack for $60 on the website, yet there’s no such pack on the Impulse listings, only the separate downloads for $80. So for what I want, it’s better not to have Impulse. Not a great start, really.
17/06/2008 at 21:43 Acosta says:
Jim, we are dirty europeans so we can’t buy Space Rangers 2 (well, technically we can’t, I still want to try something to check if I could “bypass” that).
I’m am really interested on how certain aspects of Impulse will work in the future. I would like to have an “indie” alternative to Steam and Impulse validation system is more suited for that. In any case, I installed and it’s pretty neat, like the layout and it’s quite fast, so I’m glad to having both (disclaimer: I won’t install any more download services, videogame industry).
17/06/2008 at 22:02 John P (Katsumoto) says:
This America only thing really fucks me off, especially as none of the publishers doing it have been at all forthcoming with the reasons for it. I can’t understand it at all. They’re missing out on reams and reams of cash from me alone (I want so much in the Ubisoft back catalogue, for instance). Gah. BOLLOCKS.
17/06/2008 at 22:16 fluffy bunny says:
“This America only thing really fucks me off, especially as none of the publishers doing it have been at all forthcoming with the reasons for it.”
I think that, in the case of Space Rangers, it’s because the US publisher is not the same as the Euro publisher, and if Stardock doesn’t have a deal with the Euro publisher, it sort of makes sense that they’re not allowed to sell the game to us.
But still, this is not the digital distribution future that I was promised. :-/
17/06/2008 at 22:24 cliffski says:
why is this more ‘indie’?
17/06/2008 at 22:31 Alex says:
Impulse has one (semi-)large benefit over Steam – you only need to be online to purchase and download the game, after that you don’t need to be online to play.
And Space Rangers 2 is indeed excellent, it’s quite readily available in stores (retail and online) here (the Dutch lands!).
17/06/2008 at 22:35 muteh says:
Steam has offline play too; it’s not perfect, but it’s better than in the early days when you had to say that you were planning on being offline first.
17/06/2008 at 23:03 Brad Wardell says:
Hi guys, checking on the Space Rangers 2 worldwide rights. On most of our titles, it’s worldwide.
Regarding items on the store (like the GalCiv bundle), we’re still in the process of adding more and more store items to the Impulse store. By the end of the week, we should be fully caught up. It’s mostly a matter of getting the artwork and “marketing” text in place for the literally hundreds and hundreds of store items.
17/06/2008 at 23:16 roBurky says:
I thought Stardock already had a digital distribution thingy. What’s different about this new one?
17/06/2008 at 23:17 Al3xand3r says:
How come I’ve been using it before they launched it? Also, “finally a Steam rival” doesn’t quite cut it, Stardock have had digital distribution long before Impulse, with their own Stardock Central. I like how this (and SDC) works though, it’s in tune with Stardock’s “no absurd copy protection” ways and you only actually run it if you want to download new games or patches. If you just want to play games you already have you never have to open it. It’s still a bit bloated when you actually do run it so people may prefer the still functional Stardock Central instead for a while longer but hey, Stardock rocks :)
Anyway, I suppose the differences with Stardock Central are that this has built in store (via browser functions really), community stuff and other such Steam-like features while I guess it’s more attractive to the general eye and looks, once again, more like a Steam rival than a simple tool that only people in the know use. Too bad they don’t have some sweet new game(s) to go with this launch, oh well :)
Edit: My Impulse is currently updating but for some reason it only shows I’ve got the Gal Civ II saga (3 titles) when I actually also have had Space Rangers 2. I hope when it’s done updating it puts that in.
Edit 2: Ok, that worked :)
17/06/2008 at 23:30 Majorb says:
What is it that I have sitting on my hard drive now called impulse? I thought it came out a while ago.
17/06/2008 at 23:38 Al3xand3r says:
I guess it’s the official launch and they’re sending out press releases everywhere. The community page is actually working now, they’ve added built in drivers downloads (it just goes to the page of your GPU manufacturer really) and other such stuff.
17/06/2008 at 23:45 Ted says:
I don’t need another digital distribution platform. Companies that don’t post to Steam aren’t getting my money.
17/06/2008 at 23:50 Al3xand3r says:
Ted, you’re pretty closed minded, especially if you don’t know of Stardock’s greatness long before this Impulse thing, both for their applications and their own games.
If you’re just worried about things running in the background, like some people have already said that’s not required to play any games you’ve bought via Impulse. Their installations are completely stand alone so it does at least that part better than Steam.
Anyway I just posted again cos I wanted to say that I found you can also transform this to a dockbar when you’re actually running it. I like it, though you’ll need to have the “custom skin” in the preferences not disabled to use that functionality. The dock would probably benefit from having support for classic non-custom skin itself as it seems quite ram heavy at the moment, but probably not more ram heavy than other widget like applications and hey, again, it’s all optional.
Impulse itself seems quite a bit faster to start up than Steam even with the custom skin on, even if it’s not required to be faster since you don’t have to use it whenever you want to game.
I hope they add some European content servers soon even if for their current audience they can probably provide fast enough support via their US servers alone.
18/06/2008 at 00:02 Valentin Galea says:
http://www.impulsedriven.com/
vs
http://www.steampowered.com
but I salute it! and I really hope it’s more indie friendly than Steam and Steamworks
18/06/2008 at 00:09 Al3xand3r says:
Well its best assets come from the fact it’s really not just a Steam rival wannabe like other services but instead it can happily co exist with Steam without cluttering your OS with unneeded services and other crap. It’s really the only way to actually become popular alongside (and who knows, maybe overtake in the future) the established Steam by not trying to make people use that instead of Valve’s platform. Smart moves. Good software. And yes, that site you linked to is damn slow to scroll in. Hope they fix that also, never noticed before as I used totalgaming.net instead…
18/06/2008 at 00:10 John P (Katsumoto) says:
@ Brad, re: Space Rangers
Really great to hear that from a guy at the top! Take note other devs: response > no response.
Feel guilty for sounding so vitriolic now, lewl. My vitriol is now fully re-directed at Ubisoft and co!
18/06/2008 at 00:23 Dodger says:
If you’ve been using Impulse, that’s because it’s been in Beta for a while now. Stardock’s been using digital distribution since 1999, so they’re pretty good at it.
Here’s an article on it by Brad, their CEO: http://draginol.impulsedriven.net/article/314940/Impulse_to_deliver_next-generation_PC_platform
I must say, I wasn’t too excited about Impulse before, but it really looks to be the next step up from Steam. Looks very developer friendly, adheres to Stardock’s philosophy when it comes to DRM, supports refunds… and it’s a distribution platform for all kinds of apps, not just games.
I especially like that you’ll be able to register a title in Impulse even if you’ve bought it somewhere else (provided that the title is available in Impulse, of course), that’ll be useful for me. Now what they need is content, content, content. Any chance on getting Paradox on board, Brad?
18/06/2008 at 00:35 Al3xand3r says:
I think that activation part also works for Steam dodger. At least that’s how I got DEFCON on it, I bought it via the developer’s own web site and could happily play it fully stand alone but then I also attempted to activate my CD Key on Steam and that also worked (obviously if the title required Steam this would be silly to mention, but DEFCON doesn’t when bought elsewhere). Perhaps that kind of thing is not officially supported though, and wouldn’t work for all possible games. I don’t know.
18/06/2008 at 00:36 malkav11 says:
I really like being able to use it as a centralized launcher for any and all of my games. This is something I’ve been wanting for a long time but has never really gelled. (Vista apparently does vaguely similar things, but, ah, fucks it up. Like Microsoft generally does.) Steam offers a similar, but less useful feature that didn’t work right for what I needed. Admittedly, it’s too soon to be sure Impulse will either, but let’s hope.
Still not clear on some details, though. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves with Steam is that it bundles every Steam game into the same directory on the same drive. I have multiple drives for a reason. Will Impulse let me individually select where my Impulse-bought games install? Happy to see SR2 Reboot, but will it install on top of my retail-box copy of the original game?
18/06/2008 at 00:37 Cian says:
publisher controlled availability
I’m assuming this refers to regional availability, and like others I’m put off by it. When Stardock seem to be doing so much else that shows their value of customers this is the opposite.
I understand that this is the publisher’s discretion, and like the Space Rangers 2 example it’s not always possible, but territorial limitations in an internet service are immensely irritating.
18/06/2008 at 00:49 Al3xand3r says:
Malkav, I don’t think that last thing works out, though you can select which drive to install things in from the preferences, all future games will install there from then on. I don’t know if already installed games remain where they previously were (and still functional) though. But you can at least select a different install path for various application types and the games separatelly, that was exactly what I needed with my tools and such going in C while games going to F :)
Cian, I don’t think they can do mucb about that. They do promote region free distribution for their own games and the games they publish themselves but they can’t hope to force their way of thinking to other publishers really. Perhaps just seeing the long term success of the region free titles will be enough to sway those, but other than that I can’t fault Stardock for allowing other publishers to stick to what they know, especially when it can involve legalities like certain games being banned in certain regions or countries or being rated differently or whatever…
18/06/2008 at 00:53 Alexander Mangel says:
uhh.. yeah.. nothing interesting in the webshop?
I am all for stimulating competition anywhere, but the problem is and will always be infrastructure. It would be great if valve opened up steam for indie productions even further while still considering production values, maybe separating it slightly from the official store.
Steam will have to invest more and more time in UI though, steam looks like a mammoth in comparison.
18/06/2008 at 01:00 Al3xand3r says:
Nothing interesting? Nothing all new to go with the Impulse official launch perhaps, but they do offer several high quality titles, namely the mentioned Galactic Civilizations 2 and expansions , Space Rangers 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, Depths of Peril, Sword of the Stars and expansions, the Penny Arcade game and a few others. It can only grow from all this really. I’m sure the launch of a future Gal Civ III alone would do wonders to boost this software…
18/06/2008 at 01:07 Zeus says:
Yay, the Space Rangers 2 expansion is also on TotalGaming.net.
I’m much more comfortable with a simple download service than a complex “steam-killer”. All I want installed is the game, thank you. Let’s hope they continue to support TotalGaming.net now that they have this new thing to play with. :)
18/06/2008 at 01:19 Brad Wardell says:
Thanks! Also, for Europeans, I should also mention that new installs are worldwide distributed based on your IP.
For instance, let’s say you’re in Germany and buy Corel Draw or whatever, you should see downloads that max out your Internet connection. The servers for the downloads are in nearly ever major country in the world (whether it be a country in Europe, Australia, etc.).
The idea is that for this sort of thing to be feasible, it has to be very very fast. Some of these downloads are huge and if it isn’t maxing out your connection (if you want it to) then it needs to be faster. :)
Also, as I’ve said elsewhere, Impulse isn’t designed to wipe out Steam. You’d have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands. I like Steam. Impulse is designed as more of a platform first than as a digital store. For instance, a lot (LOT) of freeware will soon be on here too.
If I had to sum it up: Impulse is designed to let users assign software to them as individuals as opposed to computers. Your licenses follow you rather than your machine.
18/06/2008 at 01:34 Al3xand3r says:
“Your licenses follow you rather than your machine.”
Isn’t that the same as Steam really? I would also say that Steam itself is more of a platform than a store since all the extra features far surpass the one feature of “you can buy your games through it” and wouldn’t be all necessary if all they cared for was an online store.
Impulse seems to have an equal dose of purchasing ability and extra features while I’ve been using it really. Not to mention one of my small gripes is it actually loads the store page even if you never navigate to it (check your temp net files folder) after opening the program.
But like I said, I love I don’t actually have to open the program to play the games I own except for when I want to use the extra features like auto updating or to buy something through it.
Also, what’s the point of freeware on the likes of Impulse? I guess it’s nice they will help promote some nice developers’ efforts in this way but other than that putting the software on it doesn’t offer anything substantial does it?
It’s also obviously a marketing thing to give Impulse more popularity and helps Impulse as much as the games’ developers. Get Impulse, get free games, even if said games are free without Impulse anyway.
Unless they actually plan to put out patches or extra content for such freeware which I think is unlikely. Or maybe it will be freeware developed for Impulse alone. But really even all that would show an obvious (but also very welcome, nothing against it) marketing trick.
So I really don’t think that the “free games!” thing alone excludes it as a Steam competitor. What excludes it in my opinion is that it’s so easy for it to co exist with Steam rather than have it conflict with yet more OS clutter and such, making people use one or the other and never at the same time to avoid bloat.
The different philosophies of the companies help separate and distance it even if they really are competing at least in terms of attempting to become as known as Steam and get as much player and publisher support as Steam (or more).
If what you say about content servers is true, how come all I can select from the server options of Impulse is “US 1″ and “US 2″ then? Is it just for the login servers? Why not just auto pick the fastest responding server to avoid confusion if that’s the case?
18/06/2008 at 01:44 MeestaNob! says:
I’m all for competition EXCEPT FOR THIS. I dearly wish Stardock and Valve would work together instead of going at each other.
18/06/2008 at 01:47 Al3xand3r says:
I think it’s very healthy the way it’s done here MeestaNob. Valve would never allow their games to be run without Steam running in the background.
Stardock will hopefully never do that. If anything I’ll probably buy games available on both via Impulse since I prefer not having to run the clutter, especially for games that don’t really use Steam’s core like server browsers and the like.
But I still like Steam and it’s also much less intrusive than it could have been for something aiming to be so mainstream and aiding noobs in keeping themselves up to date and the like and I obviously do like Valve’s games and other games only available through it as far as digital distribution goes.
I’d probably never ever install another platform like Steam which has to always run while you game but I’ve been happy with using Impulse (and Stardock Central before that).
18/06/2008 at 01:51 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Trouble is, I use Steam for all my IM-ing, and if you don’t run the game through steam you can’t get the steam overlay and hence can’t chat – I therefore have to run my games via steam really.
18/06/2008 at 01:52 Burgerboy says:
Sigh, the one product I want to buy (The SR2 exp) is the only one i’m not allowed to :(
I had to import the original, i’m not even sure if a .au publishing deal ever eventuated.
On an impulse-specific note – it sure would be nice if the window borders actually used the windows theme, instead of a fake look-alike of the vista default.
18/06/2008 at 01:56 Al3xand3r says:
Burger, maybe your existing SR2 key will work in Impulse and will allow you to get the expansion after it thinks you have the original? I’m not sure if it has the Steam-like activation where you just input a CD key and it unlocks the program though, I bought all the games I have on Impulse (including SR2) through it anyway, that’s why…
John P, it doesn’t mean you always want to IM while gaming… And Steam is quite the heavy messenger if that’s really the only feature you use it for. In any case, Impulse doesn’t conflict against that either since you can IM via Steam and play games bought via Impulse without actually running Impulse and adding to the bloat :)
18/06/2008 at 01:57 Brad Wardell says:
“Isn’t that the same as Steam really? I would also say that Steam itself is more of a platform than a store since all the extra features far surpass the one feature of “you can buy your games through it” and wouldn’t be all necessary if all they cared for was an online store.”
Steam works that way if you buy a Valve game certainly. But the idea with Impulse is to support everything not just games.
When you install a new machine, don’t you guys have a ton of freeware programs too that you put on your computers? Not to mention utilities, applications, etc.?
When I set up a new machine, i want to press a button and leave and come back and have it done.
“I’m all for competition EXCEPT FOR THIS. I dearly wish Stardock and Valve would work together instead of going at each other.”
Oh I dunno. As much as people might like Stardock and Steam, I think this early on, you would totally NOT want there to be only one vendor.
Mark my words: You’re going to see a ton of innovation in digital distribution in the next year or two that I suspect would never have happened if there had only been one company doing it.
Read SR2, I’m checking into that. I *think* we’ll be able to make that available worldwide. I should know more tomorrow.
18/06/2008 at 02:01 Phil says:
@Dodger – I just tried registering my store-bought copy of UT3 on Impulse, but got a message saying “Only serial numbers provided by Stardock will be accepted”.
18/06/2008 at 02:02 John P (Katsumoto) says:
Alex – what I mean was specifically in relation to the cute little dock thing Stardock puts at the bottom of the screen – it’s nice but as I have to run my games through steam so I can chat to peeps whilst playing my games it means I can’t use it. This is obviously a failing of Steam rather than Impulse, though!
I loaded up Impulse just now, and I think it has a lot of promise – at the moment it is very slow though, and sometimes pages just won’t load at all until you’ve navigated somewhere else and come back. I have no doubt these issues will all be sorted fairly rapidly though
edit: CRAP its 2am. How did that happen. I was having too much fun making my Impulse blog entry lewl. Night!
18/06/2008 at 02:16 Burgerboy says:
@Al3xand3r
Good idea re: SR2 key, however now i’ve dug out my cd’s it’s the version from 1C Company, which i’m guessing is the .uk edition – dosen’t seem to require a key to install.
18/06/2008 at 02:20 Frymaster says:
will this have the stardock central problem of completely and utterly failing if your digital distribution account email address is not the same as the paypal email address you used to buy the game? That issue (which means I need to email support any time I buy a game) is why I don’t really use stardock if I can help it.
oh, and surely enforcing no DRM is a bad thing as in, it’ll restrict the supply of titles. I mean, it’s not as if ludicrous DRM is mandatory on steam or even needed, and yet publishers still feel they have to put it in…
18/06/2008 at 02:29 Phil says:
EDIT: It seems that registration of non-Stardock games is something that’s coming later. From the Impulse website:
18/06/2008 at 02:40 Benjamin Barker says:
Cool! That Space Rangers 2: Reboot is not available anywhere else, as far as I can tell! In English, that is. I saw on their forums you get it as patches for the Russian version. If I get it and re-buy the original (Starforce-free) too I’ll have spent $70 dollars on the game, but I think it will be worth it.
18/06/2008 at 02:42 Al3xand3r says:
@Brad & @Phil:
I don’t get how that can possibly work. Surely a deal can’t be made with every single potential company out there, so how could you possibly set up an Impulse account that reinstalls and also keeps up to date all your possible software after a reformat with just the push of a button? Even for free software only, would Stardock really be able to include support for all the potential software people may use? Even software that serves very specific habbits and is possibly old and unsuported with no existing official source? I think the answer is no but I guess it’s a nice feature to have even if it’s for the potentially limited selection of more known and popular software types.
For the software that can be registered in Impulse, if it’s from another company then would Stardock be able to distribute patches for it and such? If not, then what would even be the point of registering it in my Impulse account in the first place? So again I think this will become a very limited feature with use only for software by companies Stardock has made deals with (which I guess will grow in numbers in time). I wouldn’t hype the feature just yet for that reason alone.
But maybe I’m wrong and they’ve found some clever way to do all this and it will blow me away. Stardock has a habbit of doing that in the pat :P
18/06/2008 at 03:05 lungfish says:
This Impulse thingie sounds rather spiffing, however also awesome is the The Go! Team.
Unfortunately i become disconnected from the interwebs in a week and no fundage is currently available.
/weep
apologies for any drunken ramblings
18/06/2008 at 03:12 oogy says:
@Brad Wardell
You mean something like apt for Windows? Glad someone is finally doing that. I can imagine it being very useful, especially coupled with an online profile, even if it was limited to the basics (firefox, vlc, openoffice, gqview). I’d rather it was OSS, something so fundamental and low level shouldn’t really belong to a 3rd party IMO, but the community doesn’t seem interested. Good luck.
18/06/2008 at 03:12 Al3xand3r says:
Eh, the fuck has your music or whatever store or band or (again) whatever have to do with Impulse? -.-
18/06/2008 at 03:13 Acosta says:
No, sorry, no DRM is AWESOME, if some close-minded producer don’t want to get it and decide not to launch something because that, Steam is always there.
Other idea I really love from Impulse (from Stardock games in general), is that you have an option for Box Download Game for guys like me that have a thing for physical copes. I took that option with Sins of a Solar Empire and was able to play, Day 1, while I waited for the boxed edition arrival. Hopefully, more companies will offer this type of small things.
18/06/2008 at 04:04 Cibbuano says:
Wha? You knew I was thinking about curing my own bacon? That’s incroyable!
Also, you plucky Americans and Europeans, with your fast, quota-less internet – you make me sick.
Well, truthfully, I make myself sick. I’m here in Australia, with a wireless connection at the blazingly fast speed of 256 kbps, quoted. I bought the Gal Civ bundle (because it looks oh-so-good) and I’m downloading it at home right now.
Woo hoo. Downloading for 8 hours and I’ve got 300 MB so far. When I reach my pitiful quota of 3 GB, it’ll be throttled. Someone throw me an optical fiber, please!
18/06/2008 at 04:08 Zeus says:
My main concern is this: What if Impulse shuts down?
Will I actually get an install .exe and activation code that I can back up to CD in case this company goes out of business, or loses the rights to a certain title?
I’m all for convenience, but if the last twenty years has taught us anything, it’s that *fans outlast companies*. And if we had to dial into a BBS on a modem to activate Ultima 7 we couldn’t play it today.
If Impulse works like a download client that automatically registers my game and downloads updates — fine. But if it keeps my activation code secret, if it needs to be installed *after* I buy my game, and if, like Microsoft’s DRM music, can someday disappear taking all my games with it — then I’m concerned.
18/06/2008 at 04:15 Llama says:
Reading the comments here, the more I know the more I lose my impulse…
If this thing doesn’t have an offline mode like Steam does, I ain’t touching this with a 10-foot pole.
18/06/2008 at 04:38 Al3xand3r says:
As said multiple times already, this thing doesn’t even have to run when you want to run the games you bought through it. You just run the game itself, as it would be if it was bought anywhere, except without any DRM whatsoever. So it doesn’t need an offline mode since you’d only ever use it for its online functions anyway. Buying games, updating them, and the like. Aside from that, you never have to run it. But yeah, I’m sure it works offline also though I haven’t tested as my connection is always on and I have no reason to shut it off. But really, the games work completely independently to it after install.
18/06/2008 at 04:57 runningwthszzors says:
I’m not exactly sure what the service does that Steam doesn’t do, but I think this means that the online distribution wars is officially starting. So far, I’ll put Steam under FPS lover’s library and Impulse as an eclectic mix of small name titles.
The Political Machine 2008 is out on Impulse though, so I think that’s really cool (I am a bit of a politics dork).
18/06/2008 at 06:26 diibadaaba says:
Soo is there anyway for a EU-person to get SR2 Reboot now?
Would using proxy work?
I understand that it’s not Stardock’s decision to make it US-only, but it still pisses me off..
18/06/2008 at 08:47 Therlun says:
Space Rangers 2 sucks. Nice concepts and ideas, but terrible implementation.
I’m interested in how Impulse will do alongside Steam too.
18/06/2008 at 08:50 Alarik says:
Al3xand3r: Wow, thanks for great feedback and comments.
Looking forward (hopefully) to EU support.
18/06/2008 at 10:44 nakke says:
Competition’s always good and all, but I really hope we either begin seeing every game at every big online distribution store, or that there won’t be too many more big players. Having to run five or so different platforms like this to play your games doesn’t sound like a fun idea..
18/06/2008 at 13:18 Al3xand3r says:
That’s why Impulse is good, you don’t have to run it to play your games… It’s been said so many times already, it’s like the first biggest thing differentiating it from Steam, dur :P
18/06/2008 at 16:38 Fumarole says:
That’s why his name is Llama.
18/06/2008 at 16:56 Acosta says:
Sadly, Impulse checks the IP, so the old trick of providing a valid credit card and a fake USA direction doesn’t fly (I did this to get Vampire: Bloodlines from D2D).
Why do you hate my money? *sad face*
18/06/2008 at 18:03 Brad Wardell says:
Hi guys,
Okay I checked on SR2. It’s published in North America by Cinemaware who only has rights in North America. We’re going to be talking to their European and Russian publishers to see what we can do.
Re Games selection. Right now, Impulse obviously doesn’t have the same level of selection on games as you can get elsewhere. It’s akin to when iTunes first launched and it was well behind BuyMusic.com and such.
But in a few months, I suspect it’ll be at rough parity on the games side (other than exclusives). Plus it has the software side.
Re your existing stuff. What we’re doing is working with different publishers to get permission to support their existing customers. We use the Stardock games as a proof of concept – you could buy Sins of a Solar Empire in say Russia at the store and still update through Impulse. There should be a lot of announcements in this area in the near future.
Re Impulse and being on-line. Not only does Impulse not care if you’re online or not to play your games or apps but it doesn’t even have to be loaded.
Impulse is trying to get its installed base by being a compelling enough utility in its own right (the dock for starters with more features coming). We don’t want people feeling forced to keep Impulse loaded.
18/06/2008 at 18:20 jamscones says:
Brad:
“Okay I checked on SR2. It’s published in North America by Cinemaware who only has rights in North America. We’re going to be talking to their European and Russian publishers to see what we can do.”
Well that’s interesting, because I live in the UK, and I had NO problems buying Space Rangers 2 from Stardock Central a few months ago.
18/06/2008 at 19:12 Acosta says:
Thanks a lot for the update Brad.
I understand that you are not all-powerful and you want to provide the best service for users and companies, and I get there is a license problem with regions and so, but I would like to ask you to make all that is possible to avoid too many situation where only a region has a game available. It’s really frustrating being interested on something at the store and not being able to buy it because your localization, looks the anti-internet for me. At least, try to pass the message to the producers because I really think they are losing lots of potential sales worldwide.
This, like the old games problem with CD protection you explained at QT3, is something that goes against the best interests of the companies and it would be good they notice it.
18/06/2008 at 19:20 Pantsman says:
Competition is good, so I’m glad that this exists along with Steam. That said, I doubt I’ll use it.
18/06/2008 at 19:20 Rhade says:
Having two platforms with games seems annoying to me (Steam and Impulse). I’d like to use one platform for all my games, not one for some and another for the other. (Oooh, rhymes! Or something!)
18/06/2008 at 21:26 Al3xand3r says:
There’s only a problem with Steam’s definition of platform which has to constantly run if you’re going to be gaming. Impulse thankfully doesn’t follow. Not having to run it to play your games really makes a big difference in how intrusive it feels. It’s just a way to buy games, like opening a web page really, while incorporating an efficient delivery method (simpler than making large downloads via your browser alone) and today’s expected extra features like auto updating, communities, and the like for those who want to use those.
I don’t see any downsides to using Impulse alongside Steam as you only ever have to open it when you want to buy or patch something while there are a few gems on it that you can only get through it (speaking about digital distribution at least) like the Gal Civ II saga which everyone should play. People should try the platform before judging it in this way, it seems it’s the Steam annoyances that speak when people aren’t willing to try this which is a shame as they don’t exist here and it basically boils down to just saying “I don’t want to buy games that Stardock offers” as that’s the only “annoyance” you’d have from trying it since it doesn’t force anything else on you other than its 17mb installation.
Anyway, the benefit of having platforms like these is that you can get your games from a few select reliable sources without worrying about trusting independent developer’s site x with your credit card information. The benefit of having multiple platforms like these is a healthy competition. You don’t want anybody having the monopoly whether it’s in retail or digital distribution. With Impulse being so unintrusive and promoting no DRM then perhaps you’ll see Valve making steps to make Steam itself less intrusive than it currently is for example. And of course, if a game is available in mutliple sources you can always just get it from your preffered source, showing them what you’d like the rest to be more like if you want them to buy games from there instead. Your money speaks.
I just think of these things as new age stores. Retail may be dying but that doesn’t mean people will start trusting any random site for ther purchases. In general we still need “stores” which can offer us security, selection, easy browsing, and an efficient delivery method that isn’t restricted by a specific developer’s limited resources. Stuff like that is why I enjoy this kind of service, cos it really is a service, both to players and developers. Developers get extra exposure by appearing on popular platforms, players get the features already mentioned.
So maybe we’ll all end up using a handful of Impulse like unintrusive and lightweight platforms. Or maybe when all the related companies see the space is getting a bit crowded and the wider selection starts to hinder usability they’ll turn to doing this completely within the browser, sort of like Instant Action (but installing the games properly). Or maybe development will be taken in a different direction I can’t think of right now. Either way, competition will certainly help shape it to the better benefit of all involved parties, developers and consumers alike.
19/06/2008 at 02:25 Ted says:
Al3xand3r, do you work for Stardock or something? You’re coming off like a really obvious viral marketer.
19/06/2008 at 05:34 Frank says:
Okay, you win. If this feature is even half true, I’ll be using it (I just set up my PC and laptop, so I guess I’ll be checking it out quite a while down the road). I’m still hoping King’s Bounty arrives on Steam instead of Stardock, though.
19/06/2008 at 05:55 Al3xand3r says:
No Ted, I can simply appreciate something I’ve tried for what it is rather than speculate over it in a negative way from past experiences from other different programs (Steam). I think Brad proves Stardock have no problem talking about their software up front with no tricks like you, again, speculate. So, yeah, I prefer to defend it against unfounded attacks and educate people who don’t know much about it. What’s wrong with what? Did I attack Steam in some unsensible manner or praise Impulse in obnoxious ways as to be called a fanboy or what?
Frank, why hope for King’s Bounty on Steam? It’s a single player game so why would you want to run extra software which more or less requires an online connection (offline mode has been broken for me for sometime now)? Or even if your connection is always on like mine, or offline mode works for you, why wish to run any kind of processes like said steam.exe alongside your game? I just don’t get it. What makes you want it for Steam, especially if you intend to install Impulse after all?
The game will work completely independently to any platform if you get it via Impulse while Steam restricts that. So where’s the benefit? Okay, Impulse may not give a big advantage if you don’t mind a few wasted resources that Steam requires, but where’s the advantage of Steam in order for you to prefer getting it through that? It can’t be security or anything similar since Stardock have been proving their safety since 1999. So what is it? I’m honestly curious.
Maybe it’s the fact you have all your games on Steam and so basically use it as a list of all the games’ shortcuts to start them up from? That’s easily solved, look what I’ve done to my PC:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4376/shortcutsjn6.jpg
That’s shortcuts of all my currently installed games, whether they’re Steam or Impulse or neither. Just make a new toolbar on your taskbar, it’s rather easy and I think works better than opening the Steam window… And you could make different folders within that toolbar, sort of like a small version of the Start bar, so you’d click games and then hover over “favorites” “rpgs” “fps” “source” or whatever other categories you want.
19/06/2008 at 10:03 MaxMcG says:
The North America only thing – like others I find this really, really frustrating but what then turns that frustration into anger is how the reasons are never explained by the publishers.
Have Ubisoft ever come out and explained why Assassin’s Creed is unavailable to Europeans from Steam?
Anyway, I have lots of respect for Stardock, some great games, so I hope this is a success. Competition is always a good thing.
19/06/2008 at 15:34 Frank says:
I wasn’t interested in getting in a conversation about it, but I prefer steam over retail because (1) I don’t like keeping another disc around and in good condition (2) I like being able to re-download stuff anywhere and easily. I prefer it to impulse simply because I don’t have an account on their system yet. King’s Bounty came to mind at the mention of SR2, though I don’t actually have any idea what Katauri/1C’s publishing plans are.
Anyway, the gist was that if impulse will let me keep DaemonTools, CutePDF, MiKTeX, etc. easily available and up-to-date, that’d be cool. Thanks for the idea with the shortcuts. I’ve got a similar thing, PStart, for tiny games on my USB drive (like Cave Story), but I think I’ll stick to the quicklaunch if I need more shortcuts.
19/06/2008 at 17:04 Al3xand3r says:
Just to clarify, I didn’t ask why you prefer it over retail (I do also), we’ve obviously been discussing digital distribution methods.
Anyway, [Ryo]I see[/Ryo].
20/06/2008 at 01:38 malkav11 says:
FYI, there’s a setting in preferences that says “Prompt for install directory.” Which suggests that Impulse can indeed pick a directory on a per game basis when installing. Yay! Now to get Valve to do that too. :P
20/06/2008 at 05:49 Al3xand3r says:
Great, there’s one good thing about Impulse I didn’t catch (I guess cos I don’t need it, setting it to install all my games to F and applications to C was good enough). Maybe that can prove I’m not from Stardock to those people >_>
17/07/2008 at 09:01 Ronin says:
I’m not sure if I can divulge that information… But I am in Europe, and I have been able to buy and play SR2 Reboot.
You see, there’s a commercially available program, titled “Hide my IP”. And it has a free 3 days full functionality trial. Of course if someone could use it, set the setting at “use US proxy” (important!), and forget about it, and try to buy the Reboot, it would succeed like others have done.
But he should remember to turn it off before logging into the paypal system, since the paypal is not as forgiving, and can temporarily suspend one’s account for that. Proven!
As for the other things, the download works like a charm with the Excalibur publishing version (UK version?) of the game. No problems so far.
Enjoy.