I thought the G4WL Marketplace had already died.

It rose up as the undead. The same pretty much applies to everything related to both of the words "Live" and "Windows".

The multitude of jokes I'd love to type would ruin the natural hilarity of this. Maybe if Rebellion gets released on Steam it will finally have a decent multiplayer base.

I am a bit confused though, it says that it "requires a 3rd party client to download, install, and play." Does that mean that you buy it, then Impulse gives you a Steam-Activation key? If so, major Kudos to the team of masterminds that thought that was a good idea.

Yep, Impulse (just like D2D, GamersGate etc.) is in such case just selling Steam product key.

Yep. Works out okay sometimes, D2D sells several Steam games for less then Steam does, or includes free DLC.

And yeah, there's quite a lot of jokes to be made on this one. It took them almost no time once the "Gamestop" logo went up. Probably not so much about Sins though, since Sins multiplayer code actually works pretty well and it's just a matter of the game not being ideally suited to MP. One has to wonder if the Impulse staff reacted to being told to do that with a "finally!" or a "this blows".

Once the exclusive period is up, I'd like to see that too. No sense in staying limited to one distributor at this point.

Probably. It seems unlikely they would have wanted to keep the no Steamworks thing going forever when there's money to be made. A friend of mine in the industry said this when he saw the news:

"There's not really much internal dialogue at GameStop when it comes to choosing between pride or money."

Yep looks like gog is the only DD service I have left to use thats steam free

(saw this coming as soon as it was announced, so its no surprise. Although I am surprised they did it so fast)

Wtf is the point of buying a game through impulse that forces you to download steam? May as well just buy everything on steam. Seriously.. gamestop execs have got to be smoking something strong.

Sad day when impulse has joined the "support steam or quit gaming" crowd and even sadder when Impulse itself is supporting steam..

Guess My money is better spent on a new hobby.. maybe whittling, but in order to view my carvings you have to go down the street to the other guy who whittles and get his permission.

Or maybe i'll open a paint store... and not sell paint brushes, and just send my customers to the other paint store to get brushes

Even better.. A burger joint that just sells coupons for a burger at  McDs .

(sorry I was having fun with that.. you get the point though)

Meh, who really gives a crap so long as you can load your pc and play your games easily from one community based program. PLus don't forget updates/patches and the rest.

Do we seriously forget how much it sucks to search and download the expansions/patches/updates/mods without these carriers.

AND!@!!!!! Gifts!!! I got portal for my birthday yesterday sent to me through steam. Easiest birthday gift I ever got.

And if your a multi-game gamer like some, when u boot up, you know what your mates are playing... Oh, their playing COD4..but U NEEEED them on your DG team REALLY FAST!! how excellent to be able to message them ingame and telll the GTF over here!

And lets not forget Indie game programmers. I see plenty of cheap games available by budding next generation programmers....., without a carrier service to put them on the map, can U imagine how hard to market, press, package, distribute their game in a retail environment. These same new programmers may just one day work on....Demigod 5 ????

Where do I hope it all goes? In the future with ULTRA fast PC and net and ULTRA genius programmers, there will be minimum installation. Just login and play. anything. And if that means 10 cents a game for whatever game, or subscription, or giving them my left nut, so what. Easy gaming - get in the fast lane or go back to the 2000's with your CD rack, and multitude of CD drives in your humungus tower, turn your windows firewall on and when U get BSOD you can scream out F***KING WINDOWS 98!

Why do we still feel the need to have stand alone installations on our PC in order to feel like we get our money's worth? We are paying for ENTERTAINMENT, NOT FILES. The files are just what deliver you that entertainment.... so if you need to login and verify you're a real paying customer to play SO BE IT. Piracy does things like killing demigod.

IF Demigod was released through STEAM IMHO there would be a lot more people playing it.

Step 1: Type Homeworld Patch into google (or lycos or whatever was popular then)

Step 2: Click link, usually the official website for the game and servers with alternate mirrors

Step 3: Download

Step 4: Run Patch

Step 5: ????

Step 6: Happiness

In the entire history of playing games on the PC, I have never had an issue finding a patch. What I do find annoying is that Steam will automatically update my games, ruining mods, gametweaks, and saves. Even if I set it "Do Not Automatically Update" Steam will sometimes decide to update anyway. It recently ruined a two week long game in Total War for me. I uninstalled the game, and will probably never reinstall it since I was so angry. If I set it to not autoupdate, exit, and reload Steam, it reset it again. It does this on several games for me. No. Thank. You.

Getting a gift card or boxed game is still better imo, and I find it irritating when people start spamming messages of "get over here and play this game with me" when I'm in the middle of another game. YMMV, but that's the fastest way to get deleted from my contacts.

 Indie games being available is a plus, so no argument there. But indie games that are fun and addicting can still survive in the market, even without using major d2d services. Just ask Notch how well his game is selling on Steam.  

I was going to post something even more sensationalized, logically impaired, and melodramatic than this, but couldn't come up with anything.

Because with a standalone installation, you can still play your games when you want without asking permission. If I could buy a game on Steam, and archive some activation that let me install if after Steam (or Impulse) dies or changes it's system dramatically (like charging for redownloads.) I'd have a much smaller issue with them. If I pay money for something, even Entertainment, and I have to ask permission to be entertained every time I'd like to, it's annoying. It's annoying because I'm used to not having to ask permission. If you didn't grow up with

Steam is a terrible piracy deterrent BTW. It's stripped out much faster than anything short of a disk-check. All Steam does is prevent 2nd hand sales. And Piracy didn't kill Demigod. Demigod killed Demigod. I picked it up for $6 on a Clearance shelf, and am glad I didn't pay $7 for it.

Am I to understand the Impulse team was just forced to halt the work on Impulse Reactor? I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Gamestop deemed the project "unnecessary" or even "utterly pointless", hence the sudden appearance of Steamworks titles on Impulse.

While I wouldn't say that Gamestop's decision to acquire Impulse was driven exclusively by Impulse::Reactor, I will say that without Impulse::Reactor there'd been no team up.  It is a critical part of their strategy.  

However, and I'm not speaking for Gamestop here, one discussion point that's come up is if Impulse won't carry Steamworks titles, how can Gamestop expect Steam to carry Impulse::Reactor titles in the future?

For the same reason that Steam carries GFWL titles, Gamespy titles, Ubisoft always on titles, MMOs...

Steam is first and foremost a store. They want you to buy games from them. Sending their customers to someone else to buy games is bad business for the market leader when they can keep you as a customer.

Also, Reactor doesn't require Impulse running to work the same way Steamworks requires Steam. Based on what we've been told its entirely possible to make a Steam version of a Reactor game that still uses Steam for its updating and DRM, and uses Reactor for the stuff that Reactor does. So for Steam there's really not much of a problem there, particularly if updates are still pushed through Steam (in that case it wouldn't require an Impulse installation at all).

A monopoly is good for steam and its users since its free to download and everyone gets connected on 1 network. Its like a arcade and games store for the whole planet free of charge. Once they start selling steam then u can complain. Impulse is headed there too. There doing well for themselves. It will will be a question of where your friends are most and what games you like to play. All is good so far unless you want to start your own version of steam and impulse and feel the barriers to entry into the market.