In an interview with Shacknews, Stardock's Brad Wardell gave some great insight into why the company has been fighting so heavily for PC gamers' rights, which you should read about. But for the sake of this story, however, we are going to look at the man's thoughts on Games for Windows LIVE.

"I intended for Elemental to be on Games for Windows LIVE, but then as we got closer, the Xbox group took it over more and more," he says. "They have things where, oh, if you want to use Games for Windows LIVE to update your game, you have to go through [their] certification. And if you do it more than X number of times, you have to pay money."

"It's like, 'My friends, you can't do that on the PC.' On the console, I don't have to update my game because an anti-virus program got an update and is now identifying my VB scripts as viruses and I have to apply an emergency patch."

"If Games for Windows LIVE maintains that strategy and they take over, I'm done. I'm not making PC games," explains Wardell. "I would be done." Continuing, he says "I wish Microsoft would do a lot more in making the PC better as a gaming platform."

"For example, the Demigod fiasco with the multiplayer should never have happened. Developers on the PC should not have to license a third-party NAT facilitator. If I was making a game for the Xbox, I get that for free. And I would love if Microsoft would make these servers available -- and they do under Games for Windows LIVE -- without having all these strings attached."

Strong words, indeed. It seems like every time GFWL gets brought up on gaming sites, colorful words naturally follow. Something tells me that isn't about to change anytime soon.

[Image: Sklathill]

More and more these days, anytime you see the word "digital distribution" in a sentence, chances are high you can also find "Stardock" nearby. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- Stardock CEO Brad Wardell usually has some pretty insightful things to say about the subject.

Talking with Gamasutra in an interview, Wardell made a comment that could be deemed as hyperbolic, but I actually find the statement to be accurate: "A lot of publishers are viewing digital distribution as the thing that is going to save PC."

Whether or not you think PC gaming has "died" is besides the point. It's obviously not flourishing like it once was -- the signs are right in front of our eyes, and have been for a while now. With retail shelves for PC games shrinking, digital distribution has done nothing but expand.

Wardell gave an estimate of how much of the PC market is made up of digital games. He believes it's around the 25% mark, and thinks that number could possibly double in as short as two years from now. I couldn't say how close to reality that number is, but I do know that digital distribution is here to stay, for better or worse.

It's undoubtedly been a long, long week for the good folks at Stardock. I'm not even sure where to begin, actually. The company had originally intended (and planned for) a multiplayer infrastructure that could handle 50,000 users to be enough for Demigod, at least initially.

The plan was to add additional servers along the way, but seeing as how there ended up being around 140,000 connected users at one point during launch, everything sort of went to hell in a handbasket. To make matters worse, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell says that only 12% of those 140,000 players (these are peak hour figures, not total sales) were legitimate customers. Essentially, these warez users were using up resources by checking for game updates and other similar things that came together to put a ton of stress on the servers.

The good news comes in the form of patches for Demigod, which Stardock has been pushing out readily. The latest update is said to have made a tremendous impact on the multiplayer by isolating the paying customers from the people who pirated the game.

So, what's on the horizon? The team is going to take a much needed break this weekend, then get back to working on the next big update and beginning to look into the standard balancing issues that arise in these types of games, as well as the in-game bug reports. Keep on keeping on, guys.

While most of us were off stuffing our faces with chocolate eggs and persevering against the evil that is the Easter Bunny, the support team for the recently released Demigod was hard at work no thanks to a certain retail giant.

For whatever reason, GameStop released the game last week even though it wasn't supposed to be sold until today. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal, or anything too out of the ordinary, as street dates are broken quite frequently.

But it's the fact that Demigod is being heavily pushed as a digital download that's got people speculating that GameStop purposely botched the launch date in defiance of Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse. Either way, the slip-up forced the game's support team to configure the multiplayer servers for the unexpected amount of early players over the weekend, right after "a good solid eight weeks of massive crunch."

I don't think I need to remind you all about the state of overtime in this industry. Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has commented on the situation, saying that it's "maximized" piracy for Demigod (the game is free of copy protection), and is in discussion with GameStop to figure out how this could have happened.

[Via Gamasutra]

Today will undoubtedly be a day of celebration for Stardock, for digital distribution platform Impulse got its third major update yesterday, and it was a doozy. Seeing as how one of the most noticeable changes for the client is a sleeker user interface, it's only fitting that I outline the other additions using bullet points.

• Player rankings, achievements, "intelligent" match-making, and a new tray application that allows you to track friends and receive update notifications.
• The beta for Impulse Anywhere, "a web-based method for users whose home Internet connections are non-ideal to download their software on another machine, take the files home and install them."
• Impulse Reactor, a development platform that can allow devs to integrate Impulse features like multiplayer tournament support, friend lists, and community features into a game without making users downlad the actual Impulse client.
• Impulse Reactor overlay, which is an in-game overlay that lets you access chats, friends lists, profile data, and micro-expansions. Demigod will be the first to support this feature and Impulse Reactor.
• Game Object Obfuscation (Goo): Stardock's new consumer-friendly form of DRM that has no limit to activations, transferable licenses, and Goo'd games can be downloaded from any digital store, not just from Impluse. Read more about Goo here.

Admit it, you've sped home after purchasing a hotly anticipated game and proceeded to pour the box's contents all over your floor like a sugar-crazed child who just smashed his way through a pinata. The folks at Stardock can relate, as their picture for the Collector's Edition of Demigod looks exactly like the scene I described.

Debuting on April 14, the Collector's Edition contains a poster, the Demigod soundtrack, and a Rook figure. It's priced at a reasonable $49.95, while the Standard Edition is an affordable $39.95. In case you actually cared, the game has also gone gold. Can you feel the excitement?

Above all, I must compliment the person who came up with Demigod's box art; I'm really digging the sleek style.

Although Valve recently declared how it intends to make digital rights management obsolete with Steamworks, I think many of us are hesitant to believe that one solution from a single company is enough to remedy the current DRM situation. It's going to take the cooperation of many companies in this industry, which is why I'm happy to see Stardock stepping up to the plate.

Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse, is set to get a new anti-piracy system on April 7 that looks to be one of the most consumer-friendly solutions proposed thus far: Game Object Obfuscation (GOO). Essentially, Goo allows developers to encapsulate their game's EXE file and Impulse Reactor "into a single encrypted EXE."

This means that upon running said executable file, you are required to enter your serial number and email once; this allows the game you purchased to be tied to you and not any one machine you own. That may not sound like much, but Goo'd games also bring the following benefits:

Universal Activation.  If I buy a copy of a game from Steam or Direct2Drive or Impulse that is also available on one of the other platforms, I should be able to re-download it form any of the services that it’s available on.

Used copies. But with Goo, now the game developer and the user can both benefit and let gamers resell their copy to someone else. That’s because the Goo’d EXE is encrypted and the user can voluntarily disable their access from it thus making it transferable.

Untethered gaming. Because Goo is all self-contained, there’s no third party client floating around. A developer can use this on their game and have it available at retail or other digital distributors.

In my eyes, this sounds extremely promising -- especially the bit about being able to resell games that were purchased digitally. Are you guys feeling Goo as well?

[Via Shacknews]

Here’s a gallery full of shiny new screens from Galactic Civilizations II: Endless Universe, the upcoming add-on to Stardock’s space-faring strategy game Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. Along with toting new content, endless universe will also contain previous expansions Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor. Gal Civ II is already a game that can keep me busily clicking away for hours on end, and now I’ll have the perfect excuse to get wrapped up in galactic politics all over again.

Originally slated to come out in August, Endless Universe has since been pushed back to September, and now, to October. It would have to be coming out in what is probably the biggest month for Grade A releases this year, wouldn’t it? My wallet is going to be so light during the next three months.

PC developer and publisher Stardock -- a company well known for treating their customers with respect -- has revealed that Ironclad Games’ real-time strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire has sold over 500,000 units since its release in February. Retail copies accounted for four-fifths of the total sales, while 100,000 were distributed digitally.

"Sins of a Solar Empire was explicitly designed to work on a wide variety of machines,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell, who attributes many of these sales to the title’s low system requirements. "It will run on a four-year-old video card, and it looks great."

As an example of where they were able to cut corners, Wardell mentions that ship turrets don’t move, saying that “Sure, we could have done that, but that requires higher-end hardware, and most people don't even realize it doesn't have that. You make those kinds of design decisions, and you greatly increase the number of people who can play your game. You lose out on some piddly super-mega effect, but you get those units. The results come in sales."

I think Wardell is absolutely right in that PC games need to be able to scale well on a variety of different hardware levels; not only to reach the largest audience possible, but to also make the platform more appealing to those that aren’t as hardware savvy as the rest of us.

Not only does independent developer/publisher Stardock put out some great strategy games, they’re also somewhat well known for completely omitting any sort of DRM in their releases. Building upon this idea of actually, y’know, treating PC gamers with some modicum of respect, they’ve released a list entitled “The Gamer’s Bill of Rights,” a collection of standards that we can expect to see the company employ from this point on.

1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

Best list ever or best list ever?

Some of the items -- ok, more like ALL of them -- might seem like painfully obvious things to do, but, as I’m sure most of you are aware, are still not practiced by many publishers and developers.  And yeah, I understand that piracy is part of the reason for why they don’t do some of them, but if more and more companies started employing these standards then pirates would have absolutely no credible excuses to download games beyond “I’m a cheap bastard.”