Aroddo
Emperor
Stardock is a Software Company most noted for WindowBlinds - Skins for the Windows OS. They also developed a few marginally famous/infamous games (Galactic Civilizations, Elemental) and developed a software distribution system akin to Steam called 'Impulse'.
In short, you pay them money so you can download your game - either a Stardock game or those from any company willing to sell on their platform.
But what happens if Stardock decides it doesn't like you?
Simple: Then you don't own your games anymore.
Want to reinstall an old game or install it on a new PC? No such luck, you can't install because the Stardock server will refuse to let you download the necessary files.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
This is not speculation, it just happened to me.
After year of not playing Demigod (what's the point? Empty servers, virtually no support, game considered dead by developer GPG) i decided to reinstall on a new machine for kicks (after all, the graphics were awesome and the game was quite decent).
However, I couldn't. Looks like my registration key was considered bad. So I wrote to support and after a long long wait, I finally got the answer that my key was invalidated because of hacking attempts.
Weeeell, you have to take my word for it when I say that I didn't do any kind of hacking attempts - unless you call having several forum accounts 'hacking'.
Of course, I protested to support but - predictably - I got ignored.
Anyway, what I want to express is that in case of digital distribution you are completely at the mercy of the distributor.
Even worse, you're at the mercy of the financial well-being of that distributor ... and considering how miserable Stardock is doing since their financial fiasco with Elemental (for which CEO Wardell claimed full responsibility while still being in power - always great to know that an idiot is leading a company), it wouldn't be that great a surprise if Impulse eventually goes down the drain. And then you can kiss Impulse-bought software goodbye.
And finally, you're at the mercy of any notably powerful employee you manage to antagonize in their forums. And since Brad Wardell himself is a widely recognized forum troll, your purchases are at the whim of a CEO with an inflated ego and short temper.
In short, you pay them money so you can download your game - either a Stardock game or those from any company willing to sell on their platform.
But what happens if Stardock decides it doesn't like you?
Simple: Then you don't own your games anymore.
Want to reinstall an old game or install it on a new PC? No such luck, you can't install because the Stardock server will refuse to let you download the necessary files.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
This is not speculation, it just happened to me.
After year of not playing Demigod (what's the point? Empty servers, virtually no support, game considered dead by developer GPG) i decided to reinstall on a new machine for kicks (after all, the graphics were awesome and the game was quite decent).
However, I couldn't. Looks like my registration key was considered bad. So I wrote to support and after a long long wait, I finally got the answer that my key was invalidated because of hacking attempts.
Weeeell, you have to take my word for it when I say that I didn't do any kind of hacking attempts - unless you call having several forum accounts 'hacking'.
Of course, I protested to support but - predictably - I got ignored.
Anyway, what I want to express is that in case of digital distribution you are completely at the mercy of the distributor.
Even worse, you're at the mercy of the financial well-being of that distributor ... and considering how miserable Stardock is doing since their financial fiasco with Elemental (for which CEO Wardell claimed full responsibility while still being in power - always great to know that an idiot is leading a company), it wouldn't be that great a surprise if Impulse eventually goes down the drain. And then you can kiss Impulse-bought software goodbye.
And finally, you're at the mercy of any notably powerful employee you manage to antagonize in their forums. And since Brad Wardell himself is a widely recognized forum troll, your purchases are at the whim of a CEO with an inflated ego and short temper.
