Stardock sold Impulse

[x4000]

That's basically my read.  Of course I don't have remotely all the details, and I'm telling you this stuff partly from memory so I might have munged up some detail or other.  But my read on their announcement was "I'm sorry to see this happen because Stardock has been a company I really like working with, but I probably would have done the same thing had I been them."

[eRe4s3r]

May it be how it is, in reality nobody sane sells something that makes a profit and allows him to make the games he wants to make AND earn money at the same time, with no worries for money or financing. If he didn't want to run Impulse he could have hired a manager or even *GASP* train one from his original impulse employee base. Obviously Impulse was a money printing machine, and selling something like this is crazy.

And so far, Gamestop has fixed nothing that makes Impulse a pain either. In fact, they even stopped sending me the weekly sales compilation (great job gamestop!) (actually, after unsubscribing and resubscribing i now get them again ,p) - regional restrictions (which are ONLY on Impulse) are still there and so on.

If gamestop aims to compete on anything here except to run a store for indy games with some AAA games that are deadlocked to the US only, then they better get a move on. With EA launching Origin, with Steam becoming a behemoth that can dictate restrictive contracts theres no place for a store that doesn't get its stuff together.

Also, there hasn't be a SINGLE blog post or news item since Gamestop officially took over ship, thats how much they care about Impulse.

[zespri]

regional restrictions (which are ONLY on Impulse) are still there and so on.

Is this fair? Are there titles that you can't get outside of USA on Impulse but can on Steam?

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah, things like

Dragon Age 2
Sims 3: Generations
Witcher 2
Drakensang Bundle (Is not on Steam, but can be gotten elsewhere for some reason)
Brink

etc.

[zespri]

Strange, I thought that I read some Wardell's blog post where he said that certain companies won't sell their games through them if there is no restriction system in place. I wonder why they would sell through steam than?

[Ixolite]

Steam has regional restrictions, tho less obvious. There are still some titles that are not available in certain regions and they simply don't show up in the store in that case, rather than being there with "no, you cannot buy that" tag attatched to it. Also, some titles have regional locks - once they're bought/activated with, say, european account, they can't be used in other regions. Wiki even has a screenie for that http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/Steam_regional_limitation.PNG

[Nalgas]

Yes, Steam very definitely has regional restrictions on certain games, and if you look through the forums at all, you will find lots and lots of people complaining vigorously about it.  If you only look through the store itself you'll never see it, because they only show you what's available in the territory you're shopping from/in, though.

Edit: And the big fuss about the out-of-region codes not working in different parts of the world came up particularly a few years ago with people buying ridiculously cheap copies of games in some of the Asian countries Steam operates in and then trying to use them in the US and Europe and getting rejected.  They were not amused.

[Echo35]

Yes, Steam very definitely has regional restrictions on certain games, and if you look through the forums at all, you will find lots and lots of people complaining vigorously about it.  If you only look through the store itself you'll never see it, because they only show you what's available in the territory you're shopping from/in, though.

Edit: And the big fuss about the out-of-region codes not working in different parts of the world came up particularly a few years ago with people buying ridiculously cheap copies of games in some of the Asian countries Steam operates in and then trying to use them in the US and Europe and getting rejected.  They were not amused.

They could always pull a GoG on their store and let us set our own regions. I never have region issues, but I wouldn't be opposed to that move.

[Nalgas]

They could always pull a GoG on their store and let us set our own regions. I never have region issues, but I wouldn't be opposed to that move.

That would be really nice, but I don't think anyone who sells current big-name games from major publishers is going to risk pissing them off by doing that.  GoG is pretty awesome like that in general, though.

[zespri]

GoG?

[x4000]

GoG?

Good Old Games.

[eRe4s3r]

I guess when i said regional restriction, what i really meant was the one that affected Germany and thus me
And thats the one that affects me on Impulse...

I've learned to "sit and wait" when games come out on steam, only very very few games i pre-order... we all know next xmas is gonna be another mega sale after all with many publisher packs and what not.

What i don't like about Impulse is sort of that, i like seeing the sales when steam starts-up. For Impulse its really mysterious to me how to even find sales. And they certainly ain't doing any large ones (packs and such) or if they do, they are blocked when you use paypal payment for some reason. (least for me in Germany)

From all the shops i used, Impulse was the only one where i had 2 extremely bad experiences, 1 i couldn't use my coupon on a game that was on sale, and 2 - when they made that THQ pack it was blacklisted for Germans while it was on Steam.

GoG is not really a shop that carries modern games... Witcher 2 is the exception.

[Cyborg]

GoG gives such a tremendous value for the money. If anyone hasn't gone over there and is a fan of old games, you owe it to yourself to go take a look.

[zespri]

The thing with old games is... You know, when Starcraft 2 were announced I remembered how much I liked playing SC 1. So I found my old CD and installed it. The graphics looked soooo crappy for that day that I didn't last 5 minutes, and quickly un-installed it.

[Nalgas]

The thing with old games is... You know, when Starcraft 2 were announced I remembered how much I liked playing SC 1. So I found my old CD and installed it. The graphics looked soooo crappy for that day that I didn't last 5 minutes, and quickly un-installed it.

The graphics are rarely a problem for me.  However, I also find the original StarCraft to be completely unplayable these days, too.  The issue is over a decade of interface improvements.  Just being stuck zoomed so far in and being able to see basically nothing on the screen at once kills it for me.  Along those lines, I didn't play the original Deus Ex until this year, and while I liked a lot of ideas in it and can see how they influenced many newer games I enjoyed, it's pretty unbearable after all this time.  For a similar console experience, go play pretty much any 3D action game from before Ocarina of Time introduced/popularized "Z-targeting"/lock-on, and you will be throwing your controller at stuff within five minutes.

On the other hand, a lot of stuff has aged really well.  Generally the more a game worked within the limitations of what it had at the time rather than tried to push it, the better it seems to hold up on average, although that varies a whole lot.  Many things with any significant depth from before the 90s are fairly inaccessible these days, at least partly because there's pretty much no explanation of anything in-game and you have to dig through manuals for everything.  Something like Star Control 2 on the PC has held up over the years and is something you can mostly just jump right into, though, other than possibly having to make maps/take notes on your own outside of the game.  Likewise on the console side of things, I feel like more stuff from that time period can survive on its own merits rather than just nostalgia compared to what came before it.  As much as everyone remembers the original Super Mario Bros. as being the greatest thing ever, and as great as it was when it was new, it's kind of a crappy game in retrospect next to SMB3 and particularly SMW...