A sad future for a great game

I'm sure that will happen as soon as Valve releases Half Life on Impulse.

Impulse isn't very different then Steam anyways. If you like Steam, then what's your hesitation over Impulse?

What?

If someone doesn't like Impulse, what's stopping a person from going out to a brick and mortar store and buying a copy there.  Ever heard of that game called World of Warcraft?  Last time I checked, it wasn't on steam.

x2

I'll admit I'm confused too. Steam has little to do with anything.

I'm sorry I like this game but comparing Impulse to Steam is like comparing Captain Morgan to Billy Bob's Moonshine

Totally different league

.........noob

I more or less understand what he's saying. If Demigod was on Steam, I would already have bought it. I'm hesitant to buy it from Impulse, as I simply don't trust it.

I'm debating going and buying it at a store. I don't know, I've used Steam since the day it was released, love it and trust it. Just my 2 cents.

It won't ever happen.  Impulse is part of the networking system the game is based on.   Just like Dawn of War 2 will never be on impulse.  Not that they don't want to share, but part of the game is based on that specific digital distribution platform.   In this case, if you are unsure that impulse will be around in 5 years, 10 years, etc.   I wouldn't worry about that.  Stardock has been doing digital distribution a lot longer than steam/valve.   And you don't have to have impulse up to play at all, not even in offline mode (unlike steam)., so even if impulse went away, you could still play all your games without a problem.

Size of the steam customer base?

their customer base is about 5 million people.  Retail stores is a few hundred million.

Sure it'd help some, but Stardock just needs to advertise steam better.

Most people like, say, that bought company of heros tales of valor, had no idea it was on Impulse for almost half the price of steam for europeans. (E30 vs. $28)

If they knew about Impulse, they wouldn't of been bitching up a storm on relics forums about the prices steam sets.

I remember when Steam first came out, only a few games, buggy, small player base. Now there are crap load of games, rock solid, and butt load of players.

I expect Impulse will follow the same pattern. They already have the rock solid down, if I remember right 1 million users. All they need now are a crap load of games.

I like Steam, I have a crap load of games on 2 Steam accounts. I don't want them to be the only one.

I read somewhere that around 85% of steam customer base is counter-strike, and these people have only bought that one game and no other. Considering how popular CS is world wide and it requires steam, its easy to see it skews the data favoring steam tremendously. Still Steam has a huge selection of games. But dont get me wrong, steam is terrible at putting out patches for games not from valve. Go over to the Call of Duty forums, last i checked retail patch was out 6 days ago and steam users still couldnt play version 1.4 online. Even direct2drive had its digital distribution patch out in 12 hours of retail patch release. So while steam is great, its support is not.

this thread is basically pure nonsense. how is Impulse substantively any different than steam?

if you made it as far as this website then you know how to download impulse and how digital distribution clients work. if you've used Steam then you're already willing to give out credit card info to a digital distribution platform. there's not reasonable justification in the entire world for being ok with using Steam but not ok with using Impulse. thats like saying "i'll eat the french fries from McDonalds but not the ones from Burger King." there's no accounting for personal taste, but don't fool yourself into thinking there's a good reason for preferring one over the other.

I think his point is that you'll get additional adverstising from steam.... since they highlight new games and game specials every single day.

I think Demigod should be on the GamersGate digital distribution services. I think Paragon and Stardock would be a match made in heaven.

As far as I'm concerned, it's more of a "I've been going to this merchant/store/what have you (Steam) for years upon years, have come to rely on him, trust him, know he's solid. However, there's this other guy on the other side of town that I've never even heard of (Impulse) that has an exclusive product that I'm interested in."

For me, if I saw my reliable old friend with this product, I'd buy it from him in an instant. However, this new kid on the block that I know nothing about, I'm hesitant.

There's always brick and mortar who's an even older friend.  Probably your first friend.

Sorry but it wont happen.  Just like Valve games will never appear on Impulse, you can't expect Stardock games to appear on Steam.  There are both business and technical reasons why both companies can't and wont do this.

After watching some guys at a LAN trying to get it to work without having to buy it over Impulse, I figured it out. I know what they did. I know why they aren't on Steam right now, and I know why they will consider it down the road.

They let the DEMO hit Bittorrent.

Yeah, it's a freaking demo. It's 100% of the game, but with limited functionality. You can play single player all you want, but multiplayer requires that you log into Impulse and download an update. The update doesn't exist as a standalone installer outside of Impulse, and you can't update the game without paying for it.

Yes, I would rather have this game in Steam so that I don't have to launch a seperate app just to lauch this one game, but I will applaud them for a brilliant idea. All of the news outlets thought for sure the 180,000 illegal copies were a sign of how screwed Stardock and Impulse were, but they were all 100% wrong.

Until someone makes a crack that allows multiplayer without Impulse, they have no reason to worry. Let those 180,000 users face reality. If they like the game enough to play it with friends, they can pay for it. If they just want to mess around with it at home, they can. And no one at Stardock will say a word to them. Then a few months from now when the pirating has slowed, they can put it on Steam and sell more copies.

Just to clear up confusion, you don't HAVE to run the game from the Impulse app or have it open (even if you buy the game through Impulse as I did).  You can make a shortcut for the game anywhere.  It has a miniscule memory footprint so I don't know why it's a big deal.  But you're perfectly free to run the game as standalone app if that's your wish.

Billy Bob's Moonshine is delicious.

I think Demigod should be on the GamersGate digital distribution services.

Oh god, not that thing..

Ordered one game from it a long time ago.

When the game was released, gamers gate released it a week late.  Of course, they messed this part up to.

They released half of the game.  Yup, it wouldn't install correctly.  It took another week (And mind you, they sent several "Try redownloading" emails!) before they finally fixed it.

They gave me a $5 coupon - of which had expired by the time it was on my account.

EDIT: They also have great customer support!

The game I had bought got several patches - gamers gate supported none of them.  That's right, the game I purchased, waiting 2 weeks for, downloading at a whopping 15-20kbs (800kbs with impulse) would not support patches, as it had a modified exe.

Steam...Impulse...hell burn them all. Gimme the old days where you could fire up gamespy (before it sold out) and play whatever. I hate this new trend, and no matter what valve/stardock/ea/etc says, its marketing bs. They should build there games without the need for this extra fluff. Let third party, open source freeware own the match making market, we (as a community) will create the best software that most represents what we want to see...

ps. im a little tuned <---beer

no Nexizen, its not a demo its the real game. 

cleverly of Stardock, pirates don't get to play it online because that would require Impulse and thus require verification of having actually bought the game. 

Stardock is pretty open about their piracy and DRM policies. they don't put DRM in any of their games because they think it only screws with legit customers without putting a dent in piracy (most DRM is easily cracked). instead they use Impulse and very strict version update control to make sure paying customers get their full service and pirates get nothing except whatever was already in the file they illicitly downloaded.

and they're doing the right thing. pirates shouldn't get priority over paying customers.