Steam Vs. Impulse and Thrid-Party Sellers

I'd use Impulse for a couple reasons.  I like the client better, it doens't act as a full time front-end for the games it supports.  Also, I like Stardock better as a company and I would support them by using their store.  They're more customer oriented than anyone else out there and they actually respond to support requests.   I abandoned Steam for various reasons, one mentioned already, but from what I've read, it may be more reliable than Impulse so that might be a down side.  Impulse is a lot faster at downloading though.

One will get you HL2 EPS 3 and one will get you Gal Civ 3...

One requires you constantly run it in the background and forces you to login every time you start you computer, drags down performance, and doesn't care too much about customers. The other lets you download and then delete it and will usually respond within 1 business day to any customer complaint.

QFFT

Well Steam does not "require" you to login everytime you start your computer. It's pretty simple to remove from the statup, just like Impulse.

Between the two, I would certainly pick Impulse over Steam if all other factors are the same (price for example) primarily because when Steam goes down, and they take their servers down at the most annoying times, it can prevent you from playing not just Valve games but other games. Impulse doesn't do that since you don't have to run games through Impulse once they are installed.

also ads.

To be fair to Steam, you can run it in offline mode which (I believe) removes the requirement to connect to Valve servers.  However, last time I used Steam, you couldn't put it offline mode without connecting first.  So, you're out of luck trying to switch when the servers are down.  Overall, I feel Steam is just poorly designed in so many ways.  Impulse has none of those issues.  Though, Impulse isn't perfect either.  It has has a few warts, but nothing that's caused any problems for me.

First of all, hold off on buying STO. It dropped $10 3 weeks after launch. By summer, it'll be $20.

As for Steam vs Impulse:

Impulse is much less intrusive, while Steam has the better community features. Steam also has many more, and much better, sales than Impulse does. I use Steam way more than Impulse because of the community features. I recognize that Steam is much more intrusive, but because my main gaming group is TF2 based, I'm on Steam anyway.

Also, both customer service depts are great. Impulse proccessed my Demigod refund quickly (2 days). Steam processed my global agenda preorder refund quickly (1 day).

If the two are evenly priced, is there any reason to choose Steam? I can't think of one.

The big difference will be- do you want to be forced to use the Steam client to launch a game (and it's slower to launch at that).

If you're so concerned about the Steam community, you can just the Steam overlay on your Impulse purchased game without issue. And, the Steam client uses less memory if it's on a non-Steam game than a Steam one.

I'd buy it from Impulse.

With a MMO, why not just buy it in store?  There's no benefit to having it tied to another service since your main account is with the MMO maker.

there's one benefit to having it through a service, you don't need to have the disks to install the game, so if, for instance, you lose the disks in a move or they get scratched to the point of unreadability you can still download the game.

Pretty much all MMOs allow you to download the game directly from the official website if you already have an account.

Yeah they've been like this almost from the beginning, no real need to use a digi store; however, I do think Impulse and Steam tend to offer faster downloadds, and the other benefit could have been some sort of pre-order bonus.

I Love impulse more than steam. Steam just feels like its draining your pc resources away from you, impulse I rarely notice. Another thing I hate is when I am on the start screen of empire total war, in the corner of the screen it says, (New content avlaiable, press here to purchase)!?!?!?!?!, it just annoys me when they advertise stuff like that, if I want more units or an expansion pack for the game I WILL BLOODY FIND IT MYSELF!

last time I heard the CEO of stardock was outsmarted by a mouse, unless the owner of steam is a mouse, I think it is safe to say that impulse will go a long way.

Frogboy Vs Mouse

Until impulse gets games like empire TW, Nepolanic wars, Half-Life (- Very unlikely due to steam being owned by valve, and valve created half life) and games like modern warfare 2, its likely growth at stardock will continue to increase, but by having these games, it could have grown more rapadly and would have created a better brand awareness which = more customers

It was a very smart mouse.

I'd say it was more of a protrusion into our dimension of a hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional being.

Impulse you download way faster aka Napolean Total War 20gbs and Steam's connection sucks!

Was it Pinky or The Brain who got you??

Even they can be squished flat.

On a more serious note I wonder about one thing concerning Impulse.

I like the new Impulse TV and their "reviews" which ofcourse are ads, but still show some real gameplay. I got me thinking about how games are "chosen" for Impulse.

Are there any kind of standards of quality that has to be applied to a game that is sold through Impulse? I have a couple of scenarioes to describe what I mean.

1. ACME Gamedevelopment is a new company and comes to Stardock with a game called "Strategy - The Begining" which they want to sell on Impulse. Will Stardock check the game in any way to se that it isnt totally crap from a gaming standpoint or a technical one?

2. ANTARES Gamedevelopment has a long standning relationship with Stardock, but their latest game "Bambi the rugged killer" wasnt sold on Impulse. The game has flopped and gotten very bad reviews. Will Stardock say yes when ANTARES knocks on the door and wants Impulse sale of "Bambi..."?

They're selling Alganon. I think that pretty much says the bar is pretty low if there is a bar. I mean Alganon was Alpha when it was in beta and beta when it was released and I think that maybe this was the one with item shops open for business in beta too. Hey if you are collecting money during beta, you're released and should be judged accordingly.

I'd buy 'Dawn of War 2' in a heartbeat if I could do it on Impulse.  I don't do Steam.  Their business model seems to pretty much be, 'we own your ass, so shut up and do what we say.  Don't like it?  Fine, we just cancelled your account and now every game you ever bought from us is GONE.  Have a nice day, sucker'.    I'll pass on that.