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Stardock - From Indie Developer to Publisher

Posted by Zonk on from the growing-up-gamer dept.

Consumed_Crustacean writes "GameDaily has an interview with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Systems. In the interview, they discuss Stardock's transition from a smallish independent developer to a full-blown publisher (both retail and online). Of particular interest is the discussion on DRM and their online distribution, which Wardell opposes, and said 'Software piracy is something that tends to be overblown. The question for us boils down to the number of sales lost due to piracy versus the number of sales lost due to people not wanting to be inconvenienced.'"

6 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Amen by n9uxu8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Brother...

    Glad to see a publisher that can at least factor the consumer experience into the drm equation...

    Dave

  2. A Soft-DRM in practice! by RingDev · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Our goal is to make it very convenient to purchase our software and somewhat inconvenient to pirate it."

    That is the way to do it. A DRM shouldn't PREVENT illegal behavior, just make it so that legal behavior is more convenient! This is exactly the theory that I preach in my journal ;) http://slashdot.org/~RingDev/journal/126947

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  3. Indies by Arandir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What the difference between an indie developer and a publisher? At what point does one stop being a independent.

    p.s. One reason I ask is that a friend's rpg game company, with all of three employees, is not considered "indie", and thus finds their products frequently panned and derided on indie-oriented forums.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  4. Re:I recognise that name... by kwilas · · Score: 5, Informative

    Disclaimer: I work for Stardock. Stardock does not bundle adware, malware, or spyware with our applications. While I'm thrilled that Windows Classic is "just fine" for you, some people like their car to come in a color other than black.

  5. stardock ownz by davez0r · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i was just going to say that stardock makes galactic civilizations, which is awesome. i pirated it at first, but i liked it so much that i bought it.

    and i had no idea they had so many other products

    yay to them.

    1. Re:stardock ownz by JediLow · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Stardock is a pretty good company. I've been keeping up with the developers journals about GalCiv II and the amount of work that they've put into it to make something good is above and beyond what people do these days. Instead of the patch mentality that most companies have they're trying to get the game shipped in a finished state... which more companies really should follow.

      It also helps that their staff regularly reads the forums and answers questions...