Thank you for clarifying that, Brad - I was wondering why Stardock's remained so quiet on that topic in the last few months. What are the chances of it being launched this year? Has any publisher shown interest in what you're doing?

Publishers and developers are the ones pushing us to work on it.

It's important to remember that Impulse::Reactor is something we have to give away for free and unlike Steamworks, we don't bundle the Impulse client so the financial model is much more tenuous.

The problem with being a blood sucking capitalist (and make no mistake, we are) is that we want to make money.  Steam was smart. And so to compete we have to provide what Steamworks does without the client because then Steam wouldn't carry the title.

But why would publishers want to use Impulse::Reactor for an big AAA title if they can just use Steam? It's already established, far more mature and widely accepted by gamers. I know the (supposed) benefits for the customers, like to not have to install a client/store but why would publishers and developers care? They actually love to have their games as close to Steam (and their 30 million users) as possible.

I just read the news for DNF ... you've got to be KIDDING ME?!

Are you serious?!?!?!?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've waited this fricken long for this to happen and then ... this happens?

I don't want steam on my system. I'll wait until DNF REALLY gets released. This is absolute and utter crap. The whole idea of having to have an internet connection to INSTALL or in some cases PLAY a game just piss me off so much. Impulse does it right. You don't need it unless you want to patch or update, which you need to connect to the internet to get a patch anyways. Steam just ... ugh. I am beyond words.

First of all, this is my first time posting on these forums. I found my way here thanks to a little something called Sins of a Solar Empire, unfortunately not either of its expansions, yet.

I haven't been very impressed with what I have heard about Steam, specifically, the way Star Wars: Empire at War's expansion pack, Forces of Corruption, files are formatted in the Gold Pack from Steam made it extremely difficult to run mods with out a lot of tedious work that just wasn't there in the retail version.

I absolutely despise this so called herd mentality, because there are a lot of people on this planet who don't have a clue about when something is actually good or not. People need to learn that just because everyone they know is using something, doesn't make it the best thing since the PC became a household item.

What you aren't getting is this simple fact:

All the above services are indeed competition to Steam, but probably only for that one game.
Customer Z buys Super Duper Game X on GamerGate which requires Steam.  Customer Z thus installs Steam because he has to, to run his game.  Oh look, I can buy all my games here on Steam, I don't need GamerGate anymore. 

Gee, GG made one sale but will never see another dime from Customer Z since they will now buy all their games on Steam directly.

Why is this such a hard concept for you to understand?

Stardock sees this and knows that long term it would kill their business sending it straight to Steam.  Thus they are trying to stand up to Steam and not send their customers there by selling Steam required games.

Pretty simple really.

I remember Duke Nuke 'em from years ago. It was an improvement over the other 1st person shooters then around. Worth a couple nights entertainment. Instead of just an hour or two, like Castle Wolfenstein.

A couple of nights entertainment is no reason to infect your computer with the steam virus.

Looks like I'll be passing on this one. What a shame...

I enjoyed the last duke (the 3d one), but as a few others have stated I will NOT accept ANY virus or other program that MUST phone home every time I want to use the program on privacy grounds.

but there is a feature I would like to see in impulse, which is the uploading of the crash reports/dumps so that the developer can use them to help improve their program, rather than an entirely manual system as at present.

harpo

Because Reactor can let you use your Facebook account, and there's an order of magnitude more of those. If it can tie in to that kind of social network instead of having its own, then there's a lot of potential to do stuff that Steam can't. It's also nicer for less experienced users, who know how to log in to facebook but can be confused by having to create a Steam account (and yes, I have seen this first hand).

Steamworks is good, but it's not invincible. There's a market for something similar but without requiring retail copies of games to include third party software (Steam).

I too like the idea of a more automated uploading of crash reports/dumps in Impulse.

Best regards,
Steven.

Yeah, I understand that stance. Its a tough market to be in right now. Been looking forward to Reactor for a while because what we really need is something that's on par with Steamworks.