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Gamestop doesn't sell computer games anyway. As long as consoles remain popular and games come on a disk, I don't see them going away. And that seems like it's going to be true for at least the next seven years.

Except for the fact that GameStop does sell PC games. It has its own digital download service:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/67981/gamestop-buys-impulse-spawn-labs
http://www.impulsedriven.com/

Gamestop doesn't sell computer games anyway.

Gamestop certainly sells PC games, though it's a limited selection in store. They also bought Impulse a while back.

As long as consoles remain popular and games come on a disk, I don't see them going away.

I guess it's good you don't run Gamestop. The bolded part is far from a given. Gamestop sees the writing on the wall. They're already trying to get as much of the digital pie as they can.

Here's some links for the GameStop option: Digital Deluxe edition - regular edition

Here's some links for the GameStop option: Digital Deluxe edition - regular edition

GameStop has also been getting into the refurbished iDevice market. There will always be hardware of some kind to (re)sell.

I'd be glad to be pointed to evidence stating the opposite, but I'm under the impression it's just a handful of publishers who are getting rich and the rest of the industry isn't getting a lot out of selling PC games.

I think it's more accurate to say that like all mature markets, there are a handful of companies at the top of the heap raking in the dough by the double bucketload. However, unlike the console market, the PC gaming market has plenty of alternative storefronts for the smaller publishers to sell their wares and remain profitable. (And I haven't even really scratched the surface!)

The end result is that there is a far, FAR richer variety of games available for PCs than there is for consoles.

As it is now, I am whining, but about their BS deus ex 'bundling' with Gamestop.

The GameStop Deus Ex fiasco involved Square-Enix and OnLive. Valve/Steam had nothing to do with it.

Also, in case you missed it, GameStop owns one of Steam's competitors, Impulse, which was why this whole fiasco between them and OnLive happened in the first place.

In my experience, the games bought from Impulse are good as well. I have two games from them, and in both cases I was able to copy the games to my newer PC and the laptop without installing or even having the Impulse client. I'm not sure how their DRM works, but it seems to be lighter than steam. They generally don't have as many games in their library or as good a deals as steam though.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/

Here are the main articles on this sale on the Impulse Driven forums (the official forums of the website):
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407118
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127

The issue is fairly well discussed by a user named WhiteElk here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916363 and here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916493

The TL;DRFA version is that GameStop seems to be strongly loathed by the same people who would be their customers, i.e users of Impulse. People are concerned that they will no longer be able to access the games they paid for or that there will be a mandatory update or the inclusion of DRM. Although one could dismiss these issues by pointing to the EULA, it ignores the original "spirit" (for lack of a better term) of Impulse/Stardock, the "spirit" laid out by the CEO himself, including reduced/no DRM, supporting Indie development, and most importantly, the Gamer Bills of Rights.

Perhaps Gamestop will actually make something interesting out of Impulse, but I doubt it. I think unfortunately they will not innovate and will copy Steam instead.

Here are the main articles on this sale on the Impulse Driven forums (the official forums of the website):
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407118
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127

The issue is fairly well discussed by a user named WhiteElk here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916363 and here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916493

The TL;DRFA version is that GameStop seems to be strongly loathed by the same people who would be their customers, i.e users of Impulse. People are concerned that they will no longer be able to access the games they paid for or that there will be a mandatory update or the inclusion of DRM. Although one could dismiss these issues by pointing to the EULA, it ignores the original "spirit" (for lack of a better term) of Impulse/Stardock, the "spirit" laid out by the CEO himself, including reduced/no DRM, supporting Indie development, and most importantly, the Gamer Bills of Rights.

Perhaps Gamestop will actually make something interesting out of Impulse, but I doubt it. I think unfortunately they will not innovate and will copy Steam instead.

Here are the main articles on this sale on the Impulse Driven forums (the official forums of the website):
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407118
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127

The issue is fairly well discussed by a user named WhiteElk here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916363 and here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916493

The TL;DRFA version is that GameStop seems to be strongly loathed by the same people who would be their customers, i.e users of Impulse. People are concerned that they will no longer be able to access the games they paid for or that there will be a mandatory update or the inclusion of DRM. Although one could dismiss these issues by pointing to the EULA, it ignores the original "spirit" (for lack of a better term) of Impulse/Stardock, the "spirit" laid out by the CEO himself, including reduced/no DRM, supporting Indie development, and most importantly, the Gamer Bills of Rights.

Perhaps Gamestop will actually make something interesting out of Impulse, but I doubt it. I think unfortunately they will not innovate and will copy Steam instead.

Here are the main articles on this sale on the Impulse Driven forums (the official forums of the website):
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407118
http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127

The issue is fairly well discussed by a user named WhiteElk here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916363 and here: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/407127/get;2916493

The TL;DRFA version is that GameStop seems to be strongly loathed by the same people who would be their customers, i.e users of Impulse. People are concerned that they will no longer be able to access the games they paid for or that there will be a mandatory update or the inclusion of DRM. Although one could dismiss these issues by pointing to the EULA, it ignores the original "spirit" (for lack of a better term) of Impulse/Stardock, the "spirit" laid out by the CEO himself, including reduced/no DRM, supporting Indie development, and most importantly, the Gamer Bills of Rights.

Perhaps Gamestop will actually make something interesting out of Impulse, but I doubt it. I think unfortunately they will not innovate and will copy Steam instead.

Yo dawg, I heard you like cars, so we put a car in your computer so you can drive while you compute!

But does this car have valves or is it steam powered? What about the car's specific impulse?

Try Impulse then. It still has DRM, but whatever its limitations I've yet to see them: I can easily login to the same account on two different computers at the same time, start up the same game on both then set up a match between them with *or* without internet connection throughout the whole ordeal. You do, however, need to be logged in to download updates, and I haven't tried downloading the same one simultaneously on both computers yet.

Only problem is they're a lot less picky than Steam when it comes to 3rd party DRM, so you can get some nasty surprises sometimes if you only look at the screenshots and price before buying, but most of the stuff in there is clean.

While I agree that most people are honest, I think its also that most people, who have money to spend, are lazy.

Hell, I am a perfect example of that. I will buy games on Steam NOT because they are better deals, but because I like having all my games organized with it. The alt tab into a chat/simple web interface in full screen is an excellent plus as well as having all the games auto updated. Its even hard for me to save just 10 bucks to buy it at frys than downloaded from stream and I get annoyed when there is a game I DO want but can't get though the service.

Ever since I got a "real job" and got old enough, I haven't pirated a new release game in more than 3 years. Well, I take that back. I recently downloaded Simon the Sorcerer 4 because I could not find ANY USA digital download for it. Can't even find it in the stores. Five is out but even that one is imposable to find. One link appears on Impulse but doesn't add it to the cart! I will buy it NOW but the one place I can get it doesn't exist. Oh well, off to Pirate bay then.

If I have to build a device, using a 100 dollar FPGA to record a football game off the cable box, I will do it. IF, however, I can buy a 200 dollar device to do the same thing, I would do that instead.

Surprisingly, because it slowed down impulse shopping, and by the time we've found the game on the site, our urge to "buy the game if the screenshots or video looks good" is gone.

Also, as it was pointed out on the forums (can't link to the post for now -- behind the corp wall of fire) that this being broken under these particular configurations may speed up Impulse shopping, which could finally make Stardock a threat to Steam, since Impulse already had that "It just f'n works." thing going on. None of this "Open a browser to look, with purchasing client open at the same time" stuff -- See a thumbnail, click for screenshot, close lightbox when done, and if you want it, add it to the damn cart.

But that's just my opinion on that.

I did some quick googling to be sure, but it's not even SecuROM. Just a plain ol' DVD check.

$72? Where are you getting that figure from? Are you outside the US and have ugly exchange rates or something?

Also, there is the standard edition that is $10 cheaper:
http://www.impulsedriven.com/masseffect2

Each month, you will be sent an update showing your sales for that period. The base royalty percentage is 70% but that amount goes to 85% if your website is the referring page

What about accepting reality that pirates already enjoy the premium service - and providing legit customers with the something similar??

You're argument is that Sony should make it even easier for pirates (and people that may not have pirated before)?

Well, Apple with iTMS (and many other download services) proved already false the presumption that people would pirate anyway.

Or Sony felt compelled to feed the pirates with new and more justifications to do what they did before?

Heh... well people that steal do so and rationalize it all the time. Its irrelevent what Sony does, because people will steal anyway.

Pissed customer is much likelier to pirate.

E.g. on Impulse you can get many games without any sort of copy protection. Many of them also available for free on BitTorrent. Despite that Impulse still manages sufficient sales. (And I'm a customer there.)

Just wanted to let you know, I believe that with Impulse you can "Archive" any game you have downloaded / installed (or update for a game), to be installed in the future. From what I understand, Impulse may still need to connect to their servers to verify you own the game, however they are working on "Impulse Anywhere" (see http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com/ which sounds like it will allow you download an offline installer for the games you've purchased.

Distribution of physical media is expensive and, given that nearly every PC worth speaking of will be on the 'net, why bother with shrinkwrap distribution at all? Online distribution channels such as Valve's Steam and Stardock's Impulse allow you to skip over the brick and mortar middleman completely. The systems handle purchasing, online distribution, updating, network game matchmaking & present a far lower barrier to entry for small software houses while providing a mechanism for purchasing games that's as convenient as downloading a pirated copy.

You can get it from Stardock's Impulse service http://www.impulsedriven.com/. $30 on there and you can have it as soon as you can download it. Personally, I'm a big fan. An expansion will be great, but it is already worth getting. Basically if you enjoy unstructured shooters, either online or offline, it is a good game for you. There's no real single player game to speak of (there is technically but it is just various maps with cut scenes in between) so no mission/story if that's your thing. However, online or offline, you can get a game going of whatever kind you like.

All of there resent releases have NO DRM.

Except Impulse (aka Stardock's version of Steam) is now required.

I found it _VERY_ annoying that after I bought Sins, Stardock changed their patching system to require Impulse.

No more direct downloading of patches. Yay, great way to foist your new distribution system on your customers.

No thanks, I'll not be buying another Stardock game until they unbundle them from Impulse.

Steam has its good and bad points...I enjoy the features it offers

For most people, it is a matter of trust.

And so we go directly to the heart of the DRM problem. When consumers complain about DRM, they are complaining about three things:
Lack of trust in purchase - (A lack of trust that they will own what they have purchased, and that they will not lose access to it through negligence, malice, or a critical existence failure on the part of the seller)
Lack of trust in software - (The belief that the DRM software itself will behave in a manner that is annoying, impact game or system performance, block legitimate access for dubious reasons, or worse, install something like a rootkit, causing more permanent damage to the OS or even the hardware, whether or not such a thing is *actually* possible)
Lack of comparable advantage - (The failure of the legitimately purchased software to be comparable to the pirated software. This is a *huge* problem for some software. If it has annoying intro videos, or the DRM adds several seconds of load time, or the pirated versions offer better performance, or the legitimate version has annoying crap bundled into it all over the place, or the pirated version is necessary to run mods, or you just plain need to break the DRM to back it up, or play without the CD)

Steam addresses enough of these problems for many people. Some other developers are working in similar areas, Stardock's Impulse for example, some developers are simply abandoning the whole DRM idea. Positech, GOG, and more.
Valve's Steam is also trying to capitalize on the 3rd point in particular, by offering an easy way to integrate updating, and even mods. Some people don't like it, which I certainly understand, since forced updates can and often do break third party content, but I can't deny that it's also way easier than trying to find a patch that's often not even hosted by the company that made the game, and is instead only available from some annoying third party hosting company that requires registration, or having to worry about applying three different patches in the right order to get from the retail version to the current version.

It's important to explicitly call out the properties of DRM that make it bad. DRM is out there to prevent the player from willy-nilly installing on everyone's PC's, which can be bad as it prevents you from switching computers or backing up your own games. Steam actually facilitates transferrence, as you can download any purchased games on any computer you log into. You don't need a CD to play, you don't need a CD to install on another computer, you can play your games on all the computers you have available.

Steam only runs with your games, doesn't take up a lot of CPU time, and has been stable for several years now. The one outstanding question is "what happens if Valve shuts down," but they have promised to unlock everything in such a case.

I still hear lots of complaints on forums about Steam being slow and at times denies them access to the games they've purchased. There's even a complaint in this thread. So saying Steam is stable isn't really 100% accurate. Also, anything running in the background while I play my game is going to be using some resources. Thanks, but I need those resources to play my games. Also, since Steam constantly checks to see if your games type of DRM is very bad for people overseas who have unreliable access to the internet (e.g. people overseas, military, etc.).

If we shout that DRM in all forms is terrible, none of the companies will or can listen. If we work towards removing the problematic portions of the system, we might get a compromise setup that is better than we started with.

I'm much more comfortable with the approach StarDock uses which they've been very successful with. No DRM on the disc (other than a CD key), but when you want to install updates you have to eseentially check-in online. Also Impulse, their distribution system (similar to Steam) doesn't have any DRM built-in. The game can have DRM, but the distribution system doesn't.

That's exactly the route Stardock is taking.

I can't find anything about a change in direction with Impulse. As far as I can tell, it's just their old Stardock Central under a new name, which means it's only needed to install updates, not to actually run the game. Basically it does stuff for you without getting in your way. At least, that's what it sounds like to me. I've never used Impulse, only Stardock Central.

They pulled a nice bait-and-switch with Sins. If you want the latest patches, they make you install Impulse.

If you want patches, yes. Not to play the game itself. How exactly is that a problem?

If you do decide to go the Steam route

That's exactly the route Stardock is taking.

Which is why I wont be buying any more Stardock games.

They pulled a nice bait-and-switch with Sins. If you want the latest patches, they make you install Impulse.

I don't want to EVER have to connect to the Internet to play a game after I buy it. Product activation, DRM, Steam - these are all the reasons why I have stopped buying games. And I used to buy a lot of them.

EXACTLY!

I used to buy every game Stardock released. Good games, good after-release support, no copy-protection.
But now they're switching to Impulse (think Steam).

No thanks, I don't need some client phoning home whenever it feels like it just to play A GAME.

Now I'll have to find another company to give my money to.

It's nice that they're saying that... but doesn't their Impulse digital distribution platform contain DRM? Their own site doesn't seem to say either way, the Wikipedia article says it's a DRM platform and this post on their forum suggests that Impulse supports DRM but Stardock doesn't take advantage of it in their own products.

It's nice that they're saying that... but doesn't their Impulse digital distribution platform contain DRM? Their own site doesn't seem to say either way, the Wikipedia article says it's a DRM platform and this post on their forum suggests that Impulse supports DRM but Stardock doesn't take advantage of it in their own products.

Sword of the Stars is pretty good too; it's kind of a cross between Gal Civ 2 and Sins, with turn based strategic gameplay and real-time controllable battles. It's developed by ex Barking Dog Studios peeps, just like Sins :)

Highlights:

No DRM that I've noticed, at least over Impulse.

Semi-randomized tech-trees based on a race's strengths. Just because you've researched Lasers doesn't mean you're going to get Phasers, and research can end early or hit time/cost overruns. Adds extra layers of risk to research.

Radically different propulsion methods for each race. e.g. Humans have very rapid travel along specific "Node lines", but can't stop or turn around mid-way if they detect overwhelming odds on the other side. Hivers have no faster-than-light travel, and take ages to get anywhere, but if they arrive intact they can deploy hypergates to provide instant travel between other gates.

Customizable ships, but not quite to the overwhelming degree of GalCiv 2.

...and I will buy it, just like I have bought Sins of the Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II and Space Rangers 2.

Note that SR2 I originally passed as it was originally published - it had Securom copy protection, so I let it pass.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/ is Stardock's new system, looks very promising (and more friendly than Steam, which is also nice).