Yes but that again is stardocks doing, all the games I own I can download the patch and install the patch _without_ an internet connection. That's exactly what I'm saying here, I simply want what all the other game manufactures supply and that is stand alone patches that can be installed onto a computer with no internet access. That's the norm, that's what pretty much every other game company gives you.

You know when I first purchased my copy of galciv2 you could update your game via Stardock Central AND you could also download the stand alone patch if you wanted to. Heck you could even download the entire game again. I went away thinking what awesome service Stardock was giving everyone and was really impressed them, not only had they delivered what everyone was giving but they went the extra mile and I reckognised that but now after recently reinstalled my game after a year or so of not playing and see how that has changed. Stardock central was still there but didn't work anymore, I downloaded the newer version and it didn't work either. I contacted support and was told "oh yea were not using that anymore, we use impulse now" yet you can still download stardock central for some reason.

I then started looking for stand alone patches assuming they would naturally be there and was shocked to see not only were they not there but stardock refused to give them out and their reasons for doing so made absolutley no sense. It came off as some kind of nazi approach to guarding their software. It's very bizarre, even world of warcraft a game you need to have internet to play will offer you stand alone patches.

Then I learned all about impulse. So not only is stardock not servicing their customers properly but they are acting in my opinion unprofessional and unethicly. When I bought my game there were the stand alone patches, then they simply changed the rules.

Well heaven forbid us customers should put stardock out, I mean who are we right? we just paid them our money for their software and now we have the nerve to ask for them to work a little harder and package up the data with their patch instead of having it connect over the internet. It really shouldn't be extra work, impulse already does the installation right? so the code is written and again this is what they did in the past so this is nothing new to them. All it needs to do is look on the local hard drive for the package instead of over the internet. This the norm here, this is what everyone else does. Every game company that produces stand alone patches (which is practically everyone) does this. If stardock did it there would be no need to worry about bandwidth.

Then unfortunatley it's not a stand alone patch in every sense of the word. That creates a problem doesn't it? this is what were talking about. If stardock goes offline tomorrow then that's it you're stuck with whatever version you currently have installed, if you don't have the game installed and/or backed up/archived then your stuck with whatever version you have on your cd and you have no means of updating to where stardock last left off with it before they went under.  However if they did things like everyone else then we would have full protection, we still download the last patch stardock created before they went offline from a friend or fileplanet etc.

Well that's fine leave impulse online for those that like it but distrbute stand alone patches for those that want that to install them later offline and want that protection. All a pirate has to do is get a working a email and password and get the latest patch using stardocks bandwidth. They don't even have to hack into the code, we all know how easily they manage to get ahold of account login info.

it's good for people that don't care about keeping the patches and I submit most of them really haven't thought about stardock going offline perminantly one day. If it happened all those people that are thinking they are getting great service would soon realise how important stand alone patches really are and why myself and others were talking about.

Yes but that is Stardocks doing, they could release stand alone patches like the rest of the world. I've never had to provide my game serial # etc to apply a stand alone patch. You download them and apply them at your leasure, that's pretty much how most companies does it.

So don't embed activation in the patches. Maybe I'm nieve here but I'm of the thinking that paying for the game supports the creator and by supporting them means they will continue to make great games. Stardock has made a great game but because of their refusl to support me after I've supported them, well it means I really have no intention of supporting them anymore until they fix this issue, I'm not the only one that feels this way, I just expect what every other game companies provide. I think the basic expectation is that you buy a game, you get a good manual, a stable running game and the company will fix the problems with it and give you the fix. I don't want to get the fix through a 3rd party intrusive peice of software that won't even give me the fix, it applies it for me and when SD goes out of business or if they just simply decide to no longer support the game then here I am with this game on cd and no way of patching anymore. where if it was anyone else I could google the patches if they weren't available on stardocks website and get them and keep them. It just makes common sense.

Hello DauntlessAnsible,

What would your opinion be if stardock went down tomorrow and your computer crashed.  so you repair your computer and unfortunatley you had to get a new hard drive as the old one is toast. So you reinstall everything, now that impulse is no longer running you have to install from your CD's and well that's it. You wouldn't be able to update your game to the version you had before your computer crashed because stardock refused to make stand alone patches. You start to look at other games and notice hmmm practically all of them have stand alone patches that you could download not only from the game company but from other sources as well.

Would you not think "why did stardock refuse to give us stand alone patches when everyone is does it"

So your question is, why does Stardock use internet activation as copyright protection?

Stardock is primarily a non-game software company. Most commercial software, such as Microsoft windows or Photoshop, uses online activation as DRM, and has for years. No software company is stupid enough to use a disc check, since due to the massive amount of different programs people use, many of which start when windows starts, having such a form of DRM is beyond impractical.

Since many of the programs Stardock develops are small, and easily shared, some simple form of online activation to discourage casual piracy is a logical step. After all, since windows itself requires activation, it has to be at least acceptable to customers of windows software.

So when Stardock entered the games market, they naturally used the same copyright protection mechanism they had always used. After all, the arguments in favor of said protection are just as applicable for games as for software.

@njareg- Rosco IS an employee for Stardock. Just check below the avatar. In fact, Rosco is with the support component of SD.

Well I'm not surprised, I suspect that was the case. He's arguing for this radical new approach idea which in reality is nothing of the sort. The idea is we buy the game but get a lower level of support, wow what a ground breaking idea that is. let's see how many customers this works on.

Whiskley I do understand these things but what your not hearing my friend is that everything you've mentioned is really in stardocks hands. The bottom line is when impulse goes down and if you don't have a backup then you're only method of updating your game is totally gone. You'll never be able to get your game back to the version it use to be before impulse vanished, and what are internetless users suppost to do? Not having stand alones is unbelieve irresponsible on stardocks part, it's arrogant and just unnacceptable poor customer service.

Yes impulse is faster in the sense that it downloads the patch and applies it for you. As for cheaper and seemless, It's free to download a stand alone patch, and there is no expense involved at the stardock end or shouldn't be much, the code already exists and they already created the update that impulse giving you. What's the difference? The only difference is they didn't package it up and make it available for download. You have to goto impulse and have it spoon fed to you. Even if it cost stardock some money thats really the cost of doing business isn't it? Everyone else in the industry seems to be handling it and making money. it's been done for years, this isn't a new concept here.

Stand alone patches can also be seemless and for the most part are, your assuming that every patch is not seemless and I'm sorry that's just not the case. That's in the hands of the developer right? some make horrible patches and others don't just like some companies make horrible games and others don't.

I agree and that company would probably be getting complaints from the end users but in all honestly most companies will give you one stand alone patch that will update you from whatever version you are currently running to the latest version. That's usually how it's done, some companies don't do that and shame on them for doing sloppy work but I would still feel alot better even with that system then being forced to use stardocks tool impulse to apply a patch and not be allowed to keep the patch. Remember I'm not saying pull the plug on impulse, keep it running but also supply the patches in stand alone form. I'm not asking for one every week here. If they want to update their game every day and use impulse fine but how about every 6 months putting out a cumlitave stand alone patch that we can download and keep for portability and for a little peace of mind. Is that so unreasonable?

But that fact is irrelevant, the end users don't give a damn how stardock started or what their main line of software is etc etc etc. honestly Whiskey I'm not trying to sound harsh but talking from the customers stand point no one cares about that, they made a game and the fact is that they have entered into the gaming market. They made that choice and yes we are comparing them to their competitors, that's how it works. As a customer I don't want to see customer service sacrificed because they aren't prepared to run the show properly or aren't ready to be in the big leagues. Yes I've seen Steam and I don't buy those games, Steam is another horrible backwards system that will never get my money and correct me if I'm wrong but I get the impression you don't really like steam either and I know many others don't so what does that tell you? what should that tell Stardock? Forcing your customers to run around in stardocks play pen isn't how it's done, as a company you serve the customer not the other way around.

Then you should keep using impulse and I should be supplied with stand alone patches. Lets make everyone happy. It's just the smart business move.

I don't hate impulse but I love stand alone patches, they're portable, you can use them with no internet required and if stardock should ever bite the dust well I still have my stand alones I can use when I have reinstall my game. They're greeeeeeaaattt! as tony the tiger would say

By all means keep impulse and if you don't have your game archived when it goes offline on you then I don't know what you're going to do. I think you've had a bad experience using some poorly made stand alone patches because your view on them seems a little skewed in my opinion. That's not meant as a slam or anything I appreciate your statements here but totally disagree with them and really think you should think about what happens when impulse goes down and you have to reinstall your software.

Well I look at it much differently. I install my game on my 2nd computer out at say the holiday cabin that has no internet out there and will never have it. I then copy my patch that's only 100mb to my 4gb usb stick. I take my game cd's out there, install the game and apply my one patch that updates my game to the current version, Man life is good, I then think, just imagine what some poor sucker using impulse would do in this situation, they would never be able to do what I just did in a few mins. wow life is good ...then the power goes out at the cabin...craaaappp!

Whiskey you are telling me that coping a 100mb patch to a disc is waste but you're ok with copying a 1.2gb impulse only archive file (or winzip file) and wasting a dvd on that? When you probably have your game cd's right there and all you would have to do is install form your game cds and then apply a 100mb patch from your usb stick? You really think archiving the entire freaking game, unpacking it, reactiving it, connecting to the internet, downloading the patches is the easier way? that's alot of crap to go through. Most games now adays will let you update your game automatically online and download stand alone patches, radical concept hey?

But you know what I'm not even talking about ease of use, I'm simply talking about keeping your stand alone patch so you can use it offline and use it when long after stardock is gone.

Well that's obviously an example, let's say a year or a month. You get the picture.

The problem I have with stardocks philosophy is hey you can download the patches as long as we exist or until we decide not to support the game anymore. Or worse they think that stardock will never die, well look at Enron, they went from 60 billion to bankruptcy in just 24 days. One of the largest companies in the US.

Sorry I want a little more control over my product that I paid for here. Stardock refuses to give us something everyone else gives you and I'm sorry but their reasons for doing it are total balony. look around, everyone else gives out these patches, many give out patches and even have online tools that let you download and apply them online like impulse does.So why can't stardock? it isn't an unreasonable expectation to want stand alone patches. Like I've said it isn't some radical unheard of concept, quite the opposite it's the industry standard, Stardock you are letting your customers down, do something about it. I really hope you're not some fly by night operation run by 1 guy in bamboo shack.

quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="38" id="2564985"]
Had I known that they were going to do this I would never have given them my money.

They've lost my confidence until this is resolved and I know I'm not the only one that thinks this way.
This discussion has happened several times before, most notably when Sins stopped getting stand-alone patches during the Impulse roll out. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but Brad's overall answer to this was that Stardock was better off losing a handful of disgruntled customers than continuing to do patches the old way. Bitch all you want, you're not going to get anywhere.[/quote]

 Correction do the patches the current industry standard and widely accepted way. There's big holes in this form of updating the game, I've pointed these out and the counter reasons have been just balony. People with no internet are stuck, can you imagine anyone without internet got screwed over by this decision. They have this attitude that the entire world should have internet and if they don't screw them let them suffer. It's disgusting behaviour

Also the other fact that when impulse goes offline you better have a backup copy of your game because if you reinstall it that's all your going to get is your cd copy version. It really amazes me how people don't really think and don't ask questions. Well go on worshipping stardock and letting them screw you over.

Its obvious that stardock speaks through both sides of their mouth, on one hand they post their gamer rights message giving this artifical impression how they look out for the users yet they refuse to do the most basic of functions. The arguements for stand alone patches are sound, tried and true. its amazing you even have to argue it, it's just damn foolishness.

Providing stand alone patches is a simple and basic expectation for any game provider. Yet they hide behind false reasons for forcing impulse on everyone and then I hear excuses about how small they are and too small to live up to their basic responsability and how it's more expensive to make patches even though the code has been written. It's just balony.

They aren't worth giving the money to and I feel no pity for them when their software gets pirated, they deserve it and frankly all the customers letting them get away with this are just as much to blame and deserve what's coming down the road. There will be lots of "bitching" when stardock plays its next card. "Oh we've decided not to support your game anymore, have a good one thanks for your money."

So fair enough they took my money, at the time they were making stand alone patches and then did a complete turn around and withdrew a very fundemental way of patching my game. This was an unethical move, people that bought into their game got ripped off when they did this. They also make no mention of this bizarre requirement on the game box, you don't find this out until you buy the game and open it, it's deceitful and in my case they just yanked the patches away AFTER the game was bought.

Sorry but red flags go up when a company does unprofessional and unethical behaviour, letting them get away with it just empowers them. Well they will never get my money again.

It just shows the arrogance of the ceo and company, they can't argue their point and they in fact they are in the wrong here so what's their answer? They don't live up to their duty to the customers they just try to worm out of it. I really think that all the dissatified customers should form together a class action lawsuit against these people. Make an example of them.

You've just totally proved my point for stand alone patches, You download them and keep them and if the company stops supporting the game or goes out of business you still have the patches and if you don't then the chances are pretty good that you can find them on some other site or ask for them in forum. With Stardock you don't even have that option, they've completely taken it away.

Again I'm not talking about activiation, I'm talking about stand alone patches and I'm sorry to point out but you're wrong the online activation is the standard, it isn't. Putting your play cd in the drive is what is commonly used, registering a game entitles you to additional support options but it never hinders you from playing the game or getting it's patches.

haha well the typical non thinking, dead headed fanatical fan response right there. Don't pick on poor too small to live up to customer standards Stardock. Spare me, you may not care since either you are an employee or just a die hard fan so upset at the idea that someone would have the nerve to ask stradock why they aren't servicing the customers as good as their competitors, but you go right on worshipping them and arguing with people that are really looking out for the customers interest. Stardock as 20million net worth and over 50 employees looking out for theirs, honestly wake up and give your head a shake.

Willy don't say that.  I find it all very entertaining.

But it's not just a matter of Stardock "working a little harder".  More work means employing and paying someone to do the work, which means a higher price for the end product, a longer wait for patches, or a longer development time, and so on.  Extra work is always something that should be avoided, as long as there's other more important things to get done.  (And there always will be, in the case of any duplicate patching effort.)

Anyway, personally I'm not willing to pay anything more when buying from Stardock just so they can afford to offer standalone patches... and since Stardock is doing well sales wise, the market seems to agree.

If you, and enough people who feel the same way, really want standalone patches that bad-- you could try and convince Stardock to offer paid-for patches you purchase at the store.  But I strongly suspect that you're in a tiny minority of people who actually want this, and I also suspect you wouldn't be willing to "pay for bug fixes" (you'd actually be paying for someone to package up a standalone patch for you, not for the patch itself).  Anyway I don't think the market demand for what you want is really there.

Based on this it seems like you're not listening - they are saying that the code is not written.  It is extra work (unless you're saying that Stardock is telling us lies), which translates into a higher cost for the end product, for us consumers. Impulse looks for different files and downloads newer versions as needed.  It's been stated already that downloaded executable patches don't work like that.  They might even be saving some money on not having to pay for some 3rd-party patching/installation software such as InstallShield + maint/support.

Seriously, Impulse is nice.  You should give it a chance.

I'm sorry but that's just a bunch of balony, the patches were being made up until version 1.4. The code has been written! It's not rocket science. You don't think when they make these games there aren't planning for the future, every single developer knows that any game produced will at some point require patching. Don't you think they would have made accomodations for this? They are going to make it as easy as possible to apply a patch to their game and yes I'm sure they've designed galciv2 so they could easily do so.

Impulse has to apply the patch the exact same way a stand alone patcher would. I've read the post on how impulse is suppost to be different and totally rolled my eyes up. Like I said it isn't rocket science, the _only_ thing the differs the impulse system from a stand alone patch install is the fact that it downloads the package over the internet directly instead of having it packaged with an installer. That's it, you can talk about checksums and how it directly applies the patch until you're blue in the face but that's again just abunch of double talk. A stand alone patcher does the exact same thing my friend. No difference. Impulse just directly connects to the stardock server and grabs the package and applies it for you, I'm sorry but that's isn't some amazing and magical cutting edge thing, it's just scooping the same poop a with a different scoop.

That's the sad part, you already have. You've paid them full price and they aren't even giving you the 100% full support treatment. Open your eyes sir, stop worshipping for a minite and start using your brains.

No I'm not paying them for something everyone else gives you, How does it cost them to package it? Think about it! I personally could use winzip and make a self extracting archive and put it up for download in minutes and believe it or not I've seen lots of stand alone patches that are nothing more then self extracting executables. It doesn't take extra labour because you can even write a script to auto archive it, I mean really it's a pathetic excuse to say it's costing them money to "package" it. Man I laughed at that one. They may have to purchase a license for an archiver but seeing as they have impulse already which already has archiving technology they could use that same archiving technology into their stand alone patch installer. But lets face it they've already covered all that since they were producing stand alone patches up until 1.4 so its moot.

No I'm afraid it's you who's not listening here. I've said time and time again WHY impulse is bad. The code is written, open your eyes your using it every time you use impulse, they even admit they made stand alone patches until v1.4.

There's nothing to try on impulse, it's geared to be a brain dead tool that does a very small function for you. It would be nothing for stardock to give you stand alone patches AND still keep impulse for those that like it. Check CNC4 they do that, so why can't stardock.

No this is the beginning of something much worse, are everyone that blindly lets stardock take away a portion of your support service is just openning the door for nazi ideas like SAAS (Software as a Service) to come in. They want to see if the users will let them get away with killing some support off, then they will try other ideas until the vail of saving you money or its more effecient or some other crazy reason.

The fact is you've paid full price for a game that was giving you on demend patch service AND producing stand alone patches. Other games have done this to but stardock removed their stand alone patch service, now you didn't save any money they just took away some of your support but you don't care or worse you just lapped up their reasons for taking away that support.

None of the reasons I've heard in here hold any real water:

1) Impulse prevents piracy....it doesn't you can easily get around this. Most hackers have to hack into the code, but with impulse all they need is someones account username and password. Impulse is practically hacker friendly!

2) Impulse saves you money? Really well when I bought the game I had stardock central available which did the exact same thing as impulse does AND I could download stand alone patches too. So wheres my savings? Do I get money back? Did you? no?? How is impulse saving me money? I didn't see galactic civ 2 drop in shelf price at the store, it seemed on par with other games.....hmmm not seeing the savings here.

3) Its cheaper as packaging costs more money.....hmm really? how? Packaging costs? Well last time I looked stand alone patches weren't shrinkwrapped and boxed, they don't have to be shipped. It must be all of that extra work for them to make it available on their website... ahh the bandwidth costs yes those are a killer, all those people download stand alone patches must really kill the system, People downloading via impulse must magically be using some other form of down...no it uses the stardocks bandwidth to? interesting. Well I've seen lots of developers make their patches available on FREE services such as fileplanet, in fact that's an even better solution. No stardock bandwidth needed there. 

4) Impulse is good becuase it saves stardock the time from having to write a patch installer.  Now this is a funny one because not only have they already written this it's being used by you already...impulse IS that installer. Also they hate to mention the fact that the patcher was created already back in the 1.4 version days. I mean how complicated can it get, it applies the package data, it's pretty cut & dry stuff.  Also most companies create the code and save it as a template, it gets written and it's used every time they make a patch.

I think stardock is laughing at you and everyone that just buys their cheap excuses. I'm not trying to insult but get you out of the worshipping mode and get you into prudent thinking for yourself tired of getting ripped off customer mode. Come on make these guys step up to the plate and earn their money.

*sigh* You really just don't get it do you njareg? Do you know WHY Stardock has standalone patches up to certain versions of a product? Because Impulse wasn't fully ready yet, and Stardock Central was already out the door.

I will also disprove your statement about how standalone patches look at the checksum and replace the necessary files. Take for example EA's Battlefield 2142. The version 1.5 patch for the game (it will patch any previous version to v1.5) is a whopping 535 MB. Now we look at the Impulse D/L of the v1.0/v1.05->v1.191 of the game Sins of a Solar Empire. All of some 300 MB.

It may not seem like much of a difference, but you also have to consider- it takes longer to distribute standalone patches because they 1) must be packaged as an installer. Impulse checksums against their master file servers, thus downloading only the files you need. 2) once said installer is produced, they must then host it on either their own servers or have it hosted by a file-sharing site (FileFront, MegaUpload, RapidShare, ad nauseam); and 3) they must then advertise that a new patch is out.

With Impulse, all they have to do is upload the changed files/game executables to the file server. Say I haven't been paying attention to the forums and miss 2 or 3 patches. I then decide to open Impulse because I want to see what's new, and the Updates tab flashes, thus telling me I have updates for my games. A standalone installer definitely CAN'T tell you when new updates are out.

Another thing I think you forget about is, no matter whose server hosts the patches, it's got to be payed for somehow. And I don't know about you, but I personally would rather get my patches directly through Impulse, because there is SIGNIFICANTLY less chance of getting something unpleasant. After all, with standalone patches, an ill-intentioned person could download it, tamper with it so that it installs a malicious piece of software in an inconspicuous way, and then upload it to a site that doesn't have the patch yet.

Hard to do that with a service that checksums the files and only downloads the ones that were changed or added. Also, applying a standalone patch multiple times (in case something was corrupted/damaged) can be time-consuming because standalone patches tend to be installers (in my experience anyways), and NOT self-extracting archives. And besides, a large, standalone patch may have a TON of heavily compressed files, thus, a 500 MB patch may be unpacking 1-2 gigabytes of data and then copying it into your game folder. With Impulse, it is easy to fix a corrupted install, what you download is almost always what you will have copied/overwritten to your drive.

And as for whether or not I would rather copy a bunch of (possibly very large) standalone patches versus archiving with Impulse and then copying/verifying, then yes, I would rather use Impulse, because then I have a rapidly employable copy of the game. No need to have 2 portable media units (discs/USBs/whatever), when I can have just one, especially since multi-GB (2-4) discs are pretty inexpensive. Plus, I know EXACTLY what's on there, and know EXACTLY how to set it up. Having a large number of successive standalone patches to install can be a very ANNOYING experience I would think.