Hi there.

It would appear that the push to Impulse is more of a rough shove...


Last week I e-mailed TGN/Stardock customer service, explaining that I had some tokens and wanted to purchase Sword of the Stars expansion game. I already have the original game, purchased retail and was concerned that a TGN purchased expansion wouldn't work with that.

As I recieved no response over the weekend, and out of sheer desire for something new, I took the chance and bought it anyway (from TGN, for 2 tokens). It worked just fine.

Well, anyone want to guess what the TGN CSR told me in his response today? I won't paste it here, that would be rude without his permission. But basically he said NO it won't work if you buy it from TGN but it will work great if you buy it at Impulse. Heres the link... have a nice day.

I attempted to whine about this with discretion, hoping to reach Yarlen or Frogboy just to let them know how totally insulting this was. Apparently they don't accept e-mails from the masses.

My plea to management: Do something about the miscommunication and credibility issues. I'm concerned. On the bright side, thanks for taking some action to allow us some sort of credit for our tokens.

I get emails all the time from the masses - my addy is bclair(at)stardock(dot)com.

In the case of Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood, we had to re-upload it to our servers to correct a problem the other week. As a result, it's now only available for download via Impulse as we're no longer supporting Stardock Central.  Any purchase you make via TotalGaming.net will appear on Impulse. It's just a change in the download client in that regard.

I have been a very big fan of Stardock Central, due to the fact that I frequently have to reformat my hard drive. I just visited the Stardock and had a panic attack when I couldn't find the download client. Fortunately, it was just renamed Impulse. An easy installation and now my games are all there. It looks like an improvement to me. I look forward to trying out demos in the future.

Yarlen, can you give any information on using Impulse though WINE? SDC worked ok through WINE, but according to WINE's AppDB, Impulse does not work?

Impulse requires .NET v2.0, BITS, and IE7 to function, so it's probably not going to be a WINE lover.

I was a bit angry - I have 9 tokens and was expecting to dole them out in the next year or two as new games come along. The idea that I'm stuck with little more than the present catalogue, which if I wanted I'd have bought by now is... a little infuriating.

But this, if true, makes all well again:

We are also looking into giving people the option of turning their tokens into a "gift card" of sorts, that you can use towards anything we sell. However, this is going to take us quite a bit of time to develop as we don't have anything like it at the moment.

If that's the case, then all is forgiven. I don't mind if it takes a while, but that really needs to be done.

Don't worry, it's going to happen.

Add me to this list of longtime, loyal customers who is very unhappy about this. I don't have the "one token" problem. I have 5 tokens and I want to pre-order Demigod. If this transition is happening, I'd like to use up my tokens and be done with it. I guess that's what bothers me most: if Stardock is going to shove this down our throats, they could at least offer a very user-friendly transition plan. For example, everyone who has at least one token gets grandfathered under this deal: you get a one-time chance to buy the number of tokens (at the previous discounted rate) necessary to purchase the game of your choice.

To quote Stardock's professed core values:

>>We believe in asking what our customers want and finding a way to serve their needs directly<<

I think it would be good if Brad Wardell could comment on how this applies here.

You can contact sales to purchase 1 token for $6.99 and then use your six tokens to pre-order Demigod.  Wouldn't this do the trick for you?

Can someone please tell me why my pre-order of Demigod does not show up on impulse?
I pre-ordered via TGN (as far as I remember...), and I also got some confirmation mail.
Could someone please verify...
and at least my 2 cents...
I hope SD wont end as another EA branch (brand), whatever, money gets them all...

Demigod hasn't been released yet, which is why it's not showing up. :P  The game is in pre-order and you won't see it until the first beta appears.

ah ok,
thank you for clearing this up for me

Sure thing.

what games are still coming out for TGN ?

Since you guys are partnered with UbiSoft, any chance you might be bringing in Anno 1701: Gold Edition into TGN? =P

Here's the games I'm working on for TGN:

• Overclocked
• Ghost in the Sheet
• The Guild 2
• The Guild 2: Pirates of the European Seas
• SpellForce 2: Dragon Storm
• SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars
• Space Force: Rogue Universe
• Space Force: Captains
• Gothic 3
• Agatha Christie: ATTWN
• Powerboat GT

Our deal with Ubisoft was only for Political Machine 2004. We won't be getting any more of their titles.

Do we just email them? I wasn't clear on this. I'm another one of those original Drengin.net customers with one token left.

Yup, just email [email protected] and make the request.

Don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I have a feature requrest for Impulse. A huge one. We need to be able to restore backups/archives while offline. Can do this with SD, but not Impulse. If we're behind a firewall that blocks access to Stardock (or simply aren't connected to the Internet), why shouldn't we still be able to install the archive? This is a critical feature in my opinion.

We agree and it's being worked on for a future update.

Good to hear. In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep using 7-zip to create my own archives. All-in-all, I think Impulse has promise. Just still missing a lot of features IMHO.

Thanks for the updates, Yarlen. Any hints as to when these titles may be rolled out? Will the giftcard idea still be possible?

The games I listed should start showing up by early September or sooner. The gift card idea is still in the works; it's just a matter of getting development time for it.

Because, as a consumer I have to ask, the no-DRM policy will not change, correct? Honestly, I've just discovered totalgaming.net in the last few months and no-DRM is tremendously attractive (DIE EA! AND YOUR LITTLE SPORE TO!). Steam has POed me by allowing companies to release their games on Steam with DRM still intact, which defeats the entire purpose of the client (at least they're forcing disclosure of DRM). I take it this impulse thing is going to be alot like Steam, which is fine since I trust you guys not pull any EA idiocy on us. Infact, it's rather convinent so long as you guys don't go out of business or get new EA-esque managment.

 

And for that matter, what about Comcast's "glorious" new bandwith limit?

Impulse uses our SSD system which is server-based (same as TGN). Some games on Impulse do contain 3rd party DRM systems, but we note this on their store pages so that consumers can decide on purchasing or not.