The transaction hasn't actually been completed yet. If it was done for financial reasons, would you REALLY expect Brad to come out and say "yeah we had to sell it for the cash to pay for the FE team and those evil Gamestop suckers had what we wanted"? And if it wasn't done because SD needed the money (and thus was done because Gamestop offered up a giant pile of cash that no sane business would refuse), they're not going to say that either.

I mean, come on. This stuff is always scripted to put a positive spin on it. Having Stardock slag the business unit they're trying to sell and the people they're trying to sell it to would be monumentally stupid. There's only one thing anybody involved in this can say: that's a good thing for customers.

For people who hate Steamworks it might actually turn out to be a good thing, simply because Gamestop has significantly more clout to actually do something about it then Stardock does.

That is mostly because Gamestops reputation regarding customers support and the way the handle they employees ist bad, while your reputation is very good.

If you mix good and bad it gets always worse, never the other way.

frogdog, I HOPE you got at least a billion for impulse, as the local ebgames stores in my region, have a very high turnover of young staff(the typical non management staff is about 16-18 and last about 6 months), and this is from my visiting the various stores and just looking at the staff a couple of times a month in each of the stores while passing time between customer call outs.

and the local stores do PUSH extremly heaviliy the second hand software market, and I have seen (during my visits to the stores) that they pay no more than 20-30% of the retail for trade ins, and charge atleast 85% of retail for the second hands, so have some reason to not trust their corporate ethics even though the staff could be quite ethical.

harpo

That's why I'm pessimistic, but not super-pessimistic.  If Gamestop goes evil with Impulse, consumers will just dump Impulse.  They don't have enough market share to get away with being evil.

If Gamestop is smart, then Steam gets some real competition.  Stardock would never spend the money /have the clout to compete with Valve without some major changes.

I was hoping SD would try to carve out a niche for indie gaming kinda like a high-end GOG, but that didn't happen.

Whether or not the transaction actually completed is irrelevant, the deal is already worked out and announced, the "when it happens" doesn't change anything.

And, yes, I would expect a company to be honest with its fanbase and actually say it straight up. I mean, it's not like they've had trouble in the past sharing sensitive information with their public yearly reports they put out. At worst, just don't say anything - still better than lying to our faces and trying to convince us that this is somehow a great boon.

In the end, GameStop bought it for purely selfish reasons. They bought it because it will benefit them. Any benefit gamers may see down the line is incidental. Do you really think GameStop will refuse to sell Steamworks games on Impulse? 

With Stardock, "clout" was never a bigger issue than actually *trying* to do something about it. Talking about it does not count as "doing". In the past 2 years, Impulse has not evolved at all. Ready2Play was going to match Steam's social side - canned. Reactor was supposed to allow you to re-sell games properly - canned. Reactor itself, in development for how long, and we haven't seen any of it pretty much.. All of these things actually need to be ready to use and used by SD, so they can then show to the publishers "Hey, look, we told you this stuff would work". This is how you get them to jump on board.

Funny, nice April Fools guys.  I especially liked the w t f handle.

Completely untrue. If Stardock decreases the value of Impulse before the transaction is completed by coming out and saying "Gamestop sucks, use Steam instead" it can lead to several outcomes including:

a) lawsuits

altering the transaction as the asset is now worth less

c) cancelling the transaction

At the very best, it damages Stardock's reputation in the industry as someone you want to do business with, and that's a really bad thing for a company that does a lot of business with OEMs and such.

They're dealing with a publically traded company here. How do we know the terms aren't private because Gamestop wants them to be? The yearly reports also tend to either be broad, or tell us stuff that people who were paying attention already knew. There's not something in there saying that "Impulse made $4 million of Bioware games but lost $1 million on Bethesda games, and thats why Bethesda got cranky and added Steamworks." There's a lot of actual sensitive information they don't disclose because it would either affect someone else who wants it private or because it would damage the business.

Of course they did. It's a company. You think Stardock created it to be Brad's gift to the Internet? Making money was always a big part of the equation.

As for Steamworks, that depends. GS might decide there's more money to be made in selling them. They might also decide to actually finish Reactor and then tell the publishers that they want a seperate version that uses that instead of Steamworks, and that's the only version they'll put in stores. That's something Stardock could never do.

Well we can hope that Gamestop is more serious about that, but they also have a retail operation backing it up. Buying any retail game GS sells also gives you the Impulse version? That would be pretty sweet.

Are people actually taking this seriously?  I guess you should go order that Starcraft motion technology console title they announced too. 

Or, it's possible Brad isn't familiar with Gamestop's reputation, and believed Gamestop at face value, not knowing the outrage it would cause. 

BTW: the SEC doesn't appreciate April Fool's joke, and Gamestop announced this as a public corp- so it's not a joke.  They warned and fined WWE when they did a storyline over the WWE being bought by Donald Trump.

That is (IMO) pretty unlikelly

OK , i had enough .  We don't have any fucking Gamestop store in here , and i doubt the new owner will unlock the catalogue of the region restricted games for us non NA customers .  I'd like to give back all my digital copies i bought from Stardock / Impulse , and i want to ask for a full refund .  

Honestly, how bloody stupid do you have to be to think that a publically traded company would announce to investors a fake acquisition in the same announcement as a real acquisition on March 31? Stock markets and the SEC do NOT have a sense of humor.

Denial, it's not just a river.

heh.  No kidding.  Tis quite real.  The exciting part of this is what happens as a result of the sale... and if SD has negotiated to be able to continue to publish all of their future games/software through impulse at a substantial discount. 

Expect Steamworks titles on Impulse in the near future .

I say at least give Gamestop one chance before proclaiming the end of the world.  That said, they get one chance from me.  They don't get a second, given their reputation.

http://gametheoryonline.com/2011/03/30/gamestop-digital-video-games-sale/

First Demigod. Then Elemental. Now this. What happened to Stardock? Seriously?

I honestly wish all my Impulse games were on Steam now.

I honestly hope that Stardock Central gets resurrected. Otherwise, given the apparent 'death of fixed media,' I seem destined to join the ranks of former gamers. 

Brad's personal connection (the privately-held thing) and apparent sense of honor were all that made Impulse bearable for me. If the end result of this deal is that I can only get Stardock game patches via a third party with an abominable reputation, well...

Ya don't I look stupid...

Personal feelings about this aside.. GME is selling for 22.80  a share today and looks to be going up.

You and me both and a bunch of other people.

Okay, let's say hypothetically if it was true for arguments sake, then why would Brad do this?

To give Steam a nice big middle finger, that's why.  Steam has been using it's position to make life hard so Brad thinks okay I can do that too and joins forces with a major retailer.  Thus any product who uses Steam loses out with Gamestop and Impulse can't be laughed at by steambois anymore.

He didn't join forces, he sold it. There's a difference. Strictly speaking they could put the "Elemental RPG" on Steam if they wanted to now, as there's no longer a particular reason not to.

Enough melodrama.