While so many game developers and publishers are feeling budget crunches and cutting staff members, PC game publisher Stardock is actually expanding, thanks in part to tax breaks given by its home state of Michigan. The Mlive.com web site reports today that the developer of Galactic Civilizations II and publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire plans to expand its Plymouth, Michigan base with 55 new employees.

The expansion was due in part to the granting of tax breaks by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority and was actually mentioned by the state's governor, Jennifer Granholm, in her State of the State address this week. Ironically, Granholm signed a bill a few years ago that would have restricted the sales of certain games from minors in the state (that law, like all other such legislation, was thrown out in the court system as being unconstitutional).

Big Download got a chance to chat with briefly on the phone with Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell about the new deal today which will allow the company to build a second game development team. Currently Stardock has one game development team working on the fantasy strategy game Elemental: War of Magic. Yet another team is working on Stardock's non-gaming software projects. This new expansion will be to make an all new game title which Wardell told us will be a fantasy based "old school party system" RPG. Elemental: War of Magic will be completed in 2010 and then that team will move onto working on Society, a long-in-development MMO title.

Wardell said the tax breaks, which total about $900,000 over five years, will allow Stardock to update things like their Internet connection at their location. While their Impulse game download service uses servers around the world, Stardock's own Internet connection at its office uses Comcast for its ISP to upload files like new games for the service to all those servers. Wardell said the tax breaks will allow them to upgrade their ISP to a faster connection so they can upload more games to Impulse (Wardell told us they have about 100 games waiting to upload to Impulse at the moment).