XerFireWolf

Join Date 06/2003

Steam

Are there any plans to provide any of your games on Steam. I have had Impulse for a long time, but the sheer amount of users on Steam dwarfs all of the other online distributors. Since you have now sold Impulse to GameStop, it seems logical that since you are no longer competing with Steam, that you would want to provide your games to Steam, Impulse, Origin, and any other Digital Distributors.

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Hmm id be somewhat curious to know the answer. My guess is that becasue steam itself is a form of copy protection its not very likely. Stardoc also prides itself in not placing copy protection on their Store bought games. It is my understanding that the second you intigrate any steam capabilites into the game, you now need to use steams copy protection on all games. this means I would need to install steam and authenticate online to install and play the thing for the first time, even if I bought the game from the local game store or bestbuy. It does not violate the gamers bill of rights I dont think, (although steam does have a habbit of banning entire accounts and the games purchased with them on occasion, for valid reasons granted) but they would need to use steam as Just the store frount I think, or risk loosing more buisness than they gain.

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Well, technically they would only have to implement the copy protection on the copies sold on Steam. There are many games that have a separate version that doesn't exclusively use Steam. Different companies have done different things, but not all of the games on Steam are exclusive to Steam.

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Weidbrewer

Join Date 03/2006

+19

Personally, if they give me a way to transfer my existing library from Impulse to Steam, I'd be the happiest man alive (but I realize that is a pipe dream.) One download manager and everything all in one place would be great. I'd settle for just getting my SD games moved over.

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I've got about as many games on steam as on impulse and gamersgate - plus a few from other sources. steam was ok until I hit about 50+ games and suddenly the disadvantages become annoying

Steam is my last choice unless I really need the multiplayer support, for the following reasons:

impossible to run it on two machines at once. I like to download on one machine (games are routinely 10Gb+) that is not the one I play on. as steam forces you to install in the 1 fixed directory and once you
cant play when offline in 7 out of 10 tries. In theory it should work, but there's always a spanner - bit of account data not cached, steam client update that it knows exists and wont let you play any game until you update (but you're offline), the list is endless. As I am stuck in hotels overnight and do not want to be paying ridiculous internet access rates, it is frustrating.
impossible to allow a visiting nephew to play, say, Plants versus Zombies while you play something else. Even if you "own" 100+ games, you are only allowed to have one machine on at any one time. Cant let one run (say PvZ with the snail on, or a turn based game) and play something else.
Forces spouses who want to try games to buy 2 copies, even if they never want to play at the same time/together

Frankly, I'm falling out of like with Steam very fast these days. Hesitant to buy games on Impulse until I know which way things go. This is quite good for gamersgate

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Considering some of the problems that one of my friends has been having with Impulse here recently; I would greatly appreciate a steam version of the game.

Long story short, someone elses account got tied into his and purchases were going to wrong places. Customer support unresponsive. I think his is currently in a locked and unusable state. At least that is my observation as to what could have possibly happened as again, their support has never responded.

I had done a pre-order months ago for rebellion, and now I don't see any physical reference to it on my account. (Nevermind the nightmare in design the site is in now. Go to checkout in order to login!)

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I refuse to support GameStop, and therefore their digital distribution system. As soon as they started forcibly spamming my desktop with pop-ups through impulse, I turned it off.

I have supported Stardock since Galactic Civ 1. I would like to continue purchasing Stardock games, but will only do so if they are offered on a non-Impulse distribution service. Preferably Steam or Amazon, but there are other decent ones as well. It seems kind of short sighted to alienate the largest digital PC distribution channel, especially when you are no longer a Steam competitor.

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Quoting iphigenie,

reply 4

impossible to run it on two machines at once. I like to download on one machine (games are routinely 10Gb+) that is not the one I play on. as steam forces you to install in the 1 fixed directory and once you
cant play when offline in 7 out of 10 tries. In theory it should work, but there's always a spanner - bit of account data not cached, steam client update that it knows exists and wont let you play any game until you update (but you're offline), the list is endless. As I am stuck in hotels overnight and do not want to be paying ridiculous internet access rates, it is frustrating.
impossible to allow a visiting nephew to play, say, Plants versus Zombies while you play something else. Even if you "own" 100+ games, you are only allowed to have one machine on at any one time. Cant let one run (say PvZ with the snail on, or a turn based game) and play something else.
Forces spouses who want to try games to buy 2 copies, even if they never want to play at the same time/together

I guess I'm the other way - I don't like GG because of the sporadic DRM that's not really explicitly stated. Sometimes it tells you, but in other cases, you get a nasty surprise. I also don't like the fact that even if you say keep installation files, it deletes the actual installer bootstrapper unless you do some pretty pointless playing around with the file. And the fact of downloading each separately.

I don't experience most of the issues you talk about with steam; you can't specify individually where games should be installed, true, but I have a games drive separate from my OS drive and install everything there, so I guess I never thought about that. The multiple people playing online at the same time is true, but I regularly play offline at the same time on different machines. My daughter only plays certain games- and I didn't want to get her a separate steam account as she didn't really need it. So I bought the game that she wanted, installed it, and she's been offline every since, and I've never had a problem. I also have it installed on my dev machine and my gaming machine, and always keep it offline on the dev machine and only have the problem of multiple logins when I have to update on my dev machine.

I've never liked impulse even though I like everything else Stardock. It just seemed too intrusive, so I was very happy to see Sins on Steam. I wish you could register your current copy with Steam. But I'm happy its there, and hope that the others will be too.

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