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.

Anyway, [Ryo]I see[/Ryo].

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.