goo posts

Last March, Stardock first announced their plans for Game Object Obfuscation (GOO), a new DRM idea that they claimed is trouble to use for both publishers and consumers. This week Stardock announced that Paradox Interactve has become the first publisher to use GOO in their upcoming PC games.

GOO allows game developers to protect their PC games from being pirated with a simple solution that requires the consumer to simply put in their email address and the game's serial number when the game is run for the first time. After that, consumers can play GOO-enabled games normally. Paradox will first use GOO in the upcoming game Majesty 2.

As promised, Stardock has now launched the third major upgrade to their Impulse PC game download service. As we have mentioned before the new update launches Impulse Rector, a new service for third party game developers and publishers that offers the new Game Object Obfuscation (Goo) system for anti-piracy protection along with game achievements, multiplayer matchmaking, and more. The Impulse client has also gotten a significant revamp.

On Stardock's web site, its CEO Brad Wardell gives some info on the next version of Impulse. Due out in June it wil include features such as Impulse Builder which will allow people to upload their own programes and games to be distributed by Impulse.

In addition to the Impulse revamp, Stardock announced that Paradox Interactive will be using the Goo system for its games. In addition, select titles from Activision will soon be made available from Impulse in the near future.

Last week we reported that Stardock would soon be launching Goo, a new DRM set-up that is less evasive than other systems for PC game copy protection. One of the elements of that system would be for PC gamers to actually sell their Goo-enabled PC games for others to use legally but details on how that would work were lacking.

During GDC last week our sister site Joystiq caught up with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell who gave details on how this new system would work. In a nutshell if you wanted to sell your Goo-enabled PC game you would go to Stardock's online Impulse Marketplace and sell off your license to run the game back to the publisher. A buyer could then get that license from the publisher at a cheaper price versus buying the game "new".

The publisher's advantage is that both transactions are under their control; they set the price for purchasing the "used" PC game license and also set the price for reselling it to someone else and pocket that money for themselves rather than see it go to a game retailer like Gamestop. Goo is set to launch next week and Stardock has said they will announce which publishers will use the system "soon".

While we got a bit of a preview of the announcement a couple of months ago, Stardock has now officially revealed their plans for what they are calling Game Object Obfuscation, or Goo for short (not to be confused with 2D Boy's puzzle game World of Goo). This new kind of game content protection will debut on April 7 when Stardock launches their Impulse Reactor service.

Simply put, game developers can now put in a way for their customers to just sign into a game with a single email address and serial number, which ties in that game to one person rather than one machine. It also means that game doesn't have to sign onto the Internet again in order to play. No third party client is needed and it can be used by any digital distribution service that supports the game. Gamers can also disable access to a game and transfer that license to another user. Stardock plans to announced which publishers plan to use Goo next month.