It's been a while since I bought my last Stardock game, but I'm still subscribed to their newsletter and get mail from them from time to time. Today, they sent me an invitation to participate in an online survey

I took part in the survey, and one of the questions asked about my favorite way of buying games. Several digital download stores were mentioned among the available answers, and GOG was among them. :)

While this doesn't mean much (GOG really was only one option among many others), it does indicate that Stardock at least has GOG on its radar as a possible venue of selling its games. That's good news, I thought, so I wanted to share it. :)

A good sign for Gog

Nice to hear, SOASE would be fantastic here

Got it too and you made me to partake.
Hm and they put it above GamersGate but below Direct2Drive...
And they put Impulse above Steam but below Amazon. :-)

Wonder if that'd happen. Never really seen Sins as a game that sells seperately, although in a way I imagine they do. Even in the long run it'll probably never be the whole series though since Sins Rebellion will be using Steamworks.

Because I know someone's going to say "Stardock should stay far, far away from GOG.com 'cause they're releasing the next Sins of a Solar Empire game with Steamworks!", I just have this to say:

Yes, I agree that Stardock seemingly ignoring their self-created Gamer's Bill of Rights in order to release this game is sad, and definitely bad, but have you considered that Stardock isn't as well off as they might seem? They lost what probably became their main source of income, Impulse, and we don't know how much money they currently have stored away.

Also, Impulse probably provided sufficient income for Stardock to risk building a new DRM solution (i.e. Impulse::Reactor) and have said DRM solution fail financially without too much financial troubles. Now, if they re-built the DRM from the ground-up, Stardock would face some rather difficult financial issues if at least one of their present sources of income, which are their games and the consumer subscription fees and commercial licensing fees for their Windows-only window and desktop customization software, should suddenly begin unprofitable, or the DRM solution becomes too expensive to maintain and/or develop.

Where would they if they tried to develop their DRM solution under these conditions? They wouldn't have a chance to act on their Gamer's Bill of Rights because they'd either be bankrupt or have so little money that they might as well be bankrupt! Therefore, before you naysayers chastise Stardock, take into consideration that sometimes, if a company wishes to survive, and the best course of action isn't so ethically or morally wrong that the company would rather 'die' than violate their corporate ethics, they may have to act contrary to their corporate ethics.

EDIT: Modified fourth paragraph to correct blatant logical error.

Is that survey public? If so, can I have the link? I'd too like to vote for GOG.

There's a page for it on Stardock's website:

www.stardock.com/media/Mailers/survey2011/index.html

There are no links to it from anywhere as far as I can see, so it's possible that they want to limit this survey to their existing subscribers. On the other hand, none of the questions is worded in a way that it applies only to subscribers, there's even an option for "I don't own any Stardock products" as far as I remember.

I've never heard of Stardock but I said I owned every single one of their titles, Loved GoG and rated StarDock as exceptional.

I voted, as I am a past Stardock customer. Said I still used my copy of Galactic Civilizations, loved buying from GOG.com, and I rated Stardock as Somewhat excellent because I'd imagine Stardock is doing well enough to re-build Impulse::Reactor, their previous, aborted attempt at a user-oriented DRM solution, meaning they could still follow their Gamer's Bill of Rights while providing their own social and distributed multiplayer capabilities.

Don't you think incorporating Steamworks into Sins Rebellion already severely deviated from this particular possible future you think Stardock might have?

It depends how much money they presently have, and how much money they're making from their games and their WindowsBlinds and Object Desktop subscriptions and licenses. As I'm not privy to either of these factors, I'm not going to dramatically down-rate them on principle alone - if I did, and they weren't doing all that well, even though they're now selling their games on Steam now, I feel I'd basically be telling them "I hate you because you're not following your morals even though there's a good chance you'd bankrupt the company by doing so now". (This obviously precludes the possibility of the DRM solution they build becoming a big success, however.) However, if they've got LOTS of money, and they profits/losses are such that they could realistically risk creating a new DRM system, then, yes, they definitely deserve a "Very dissatisfied" rating in my opinion because they aren't acting on their morals even though they are in the financial position to do so.

As I said in Post #6:

Some years ago, they kept stressing that most of their income came from their desktop applications, so there gaming team didn't need to be very profitable (although they were of course glad that GalCiv became such a success).

I'm a bit doubtful whether Impulse made them much money. The fact that they kept restructuring the service totally every couple of years (from Drengin Net to Totalgaming.net to Impulse to ImpulseDriven/Reactor/whatever, from subscription based to a token economy to a regular store, etc.) didn't give me the impression that it was particularly successful. If something's successful, then you evolve it instead of turning everything upside down every couple of years.

But of course, all this is just speculation, and the only available "data" comes from Stardock itself, which isn't objective.

This is all assuming they were following their Bill of rights as it was up until now, yet a lot of people will assert that they broke it (Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.) already back with their release of Elemental *after* which they had to cut their second team due to bad sales.

And this game was created at a point where they had plenty of money: Granted, it's not like they threw away their principles necessarily, it was mostly poor planning and management, but regardless of that they ended up breaking their own Gamer's Bill of Rights.

Their sale to Gamestop... of all places was also not really met with open arms.

And now they are breaking another rule by incorporating Steamworks into their game.

I'm not saying they have completely lost their morals or something like that, or that they should be judged harshly because of it. But it is telling that the very company that laid down the Gamer's Bill of Rights has turned out to go this way. And their reasoning is as follows: And I can sympathize with that. In the end, they just want to make great games, and despite what they might feel about how people should receive their games, it's not worth letting it get in the way of the game-experience they're trying to create.

Well met, Pheace. Your points were very well-made, and I agree with all of them. If I may, I'd like to add my opinions on the topics you mentioned.

For Elemental, when I read they were locking down development, I thought to myself, "What?!? I thought they said they'd release the game when it's done (implying a community majority), not when they say it's done!" And they paid financially, commercially, and publically for doing so - heck, Stardock even admitted it themselves!

For the decision to sell out to Gamestop, it seemed to me like Brad Wardell put far too much faith in what the Gamestop representatives were telling and showing him - especially given the well-documented scandals Gamestop created (i.e. selling used games as new and using fine-print disclaimers for fraudulent actions against consumers) and continues to create, such as the more recent issue of the removal of OnLive vouchers from the boxed PC versions of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Also, I think the reason Impulse::Reactor existed in the first place was because Stardock, as owners of Impulse, felt like they were in a position to attempt to shape the gaming industry's morals into what they felt was a better, more consumer-oriented form - which I believed was manifested when Stardock released their Gamer's Bill of Rights. Now that Impulse is sold and they're back to selling games and subscriptions/licenses for their Windows customization software, I don't think they believe they're in a position to do so anymore.

Again, well met, Pheace!