stardock posts

Most people think of Stardock mainly as a game developer of titles like Galactic Civilizations II and the upcoming Elemental but the truth is that the company has its hands full in several areas including third party publishing of games, developing non-gaming Windows applications like Object Desktop and the Impulse PC game download service. Today Stardock issued its 2009 customer report which gives an overview of what the company has done in the past 12 months.

The report is brutally honest with the fact that the launch of Stardock's big 2009 game, Demigod (developed by Gas Powered Games) did not go as well as anticipated due to multiplayer networking issues. The report does say that despite the launch issues, Demigod "continues to sell thousands of copies weekly."

The report goes over a number of the company's other issues such as future updates to their Impulse service (which include adding pre-loading of games), how weekend sales reductions have reduced the overall cost of PC games to consumers and lots more.

It looks like other download sites have decided to drawn a line in the sand over the decision by Infinity Ward and Activision to incorporate Steamworks into the PC port of Modern Warfare 2. Direct2Drive has already stated it won't sell the upcoming shooter because it intergrates the Steam features into the game. Now Voodoo Extreme reports that Stardock's Impulse won't sell the game either for the same reasons. Furthermore Kotaku reports that GamersGate has confirmed they won't make Modern Warfare 2 available for sale on their stores for the same reasons.

While we again point out that Steam-supported games have been sold by IGN's Direct2Drive in the past (Empire: Total War and Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II) it looks like they and the other two sites have all put their finger down in this case to protest having Steam be a requirement for purchasing Modern Warfare 2. We have emaield Valve, Infinity Ward and Activision for comment.

While we wait for developer Gas Powered Games and publisher Stardock to finally release their promised two new demigod character for Demigod, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell keeps teasing us with info about the upcoming free updates. The Demon Assassin is one of those free additons and Wardell goes into detail about his powers and abilities on the Impulse web site.

Some of the powers for the Demon Assassin include the ranged Spine Attack, Demon Speed and a power where he can exchange places with another demigod. As Wardell states, "You've just capped that portal flag, you're running away. You're going to make it. No. No you're not. You're going to die. Because the demon assassin has just exchanged places with you and now you're back at that portal and he's out in front of you." The post includes a YouTube Video of the demigod's skill tree that we have embedded above.

We've been hearing for quite a long time that there have been plans to add two new free demigod characters into the RTS game Demigod. Now it looks like that those plans are finally bearing fruit. A post on the Impulsedriven.net site by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell states the new demigod will be made available via an update that should be released "in the next couple of weeks."

Players will be able to add the two new demigods to their account and use them in regular games. Wardell says this will allow them to test the new additions out for balance issues. After that, he says that "we'll expand out access to it until everyone who has Demigod can access it." Stardock previously released info on both of the new demigods this summer.

Stardock head man Brad Wardell isn't afraid to state his opinion on pretty much any subject so in a recent Shacknews interview (conducted at PAX 2009 last month) it's no shock to hear him talk about Microsoft's efforts to promote PC gaming via their Games For Windows Live service.

Wardell stated he intended for Stardock's upcoming fantasy RPG Elemental to be a Games For Windows Live title. However, he adds that he found the conditions of working with Microsoft to be too hard. He states, " . . . 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." Ultimately he says, "If Games for Windows Live maintains that strategy and they take over, I'm done. I'm not making PC games. I would be done." We don't think that's likely to happen, however, since many major PC game titles have bypassed Games For Windows entirely,

Fans of Ironclad Games' 2008 space strategy title Sins of a Solar Empire now have a new update to download. The 1.18 patch for the game is now available via Stardock's Impulse client. There's also a 1.04 patch update for the game's 2009 micro-expansion Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment.

You can check out the massive change log for the patches at the game's official message boards. The patch mostly has a number of balance changes for the game's units and many of the changes have come at the request of the game's fans. As we reported earlier this year a second and final micro-expansion, Diplomacy, will be released in 2010.

Gas Powered Games and Stardock continue to update their recent RTS title Demigod and later today Impulse is scheduled to make available a 1.19 patch for the title. It's supposed to be a pretty extensive update with lots of bug fixes and changes along with the removal of the multiplayer Skirmish mode (it will still be available for single player). Another patch is due out next week.

In addition, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has posted up a Q&A based on forum questions about the future of Demigod. Quick summary; they will be making even more patch updates in the future to add new features such as the mod SDK for the game as well as possibly making new official maps (although Wardell does state, " . . . making maps is not easy. Unless you have a very good understanding of 3D Studio you will want to leave it to others.). As previously reported two new Demigods are being worked on for a free update but Wardell states, "My understanding that the artwork is taking longer than anticipated."

Update: The patch is now available to download via Impulse

Download the Demigod Demo at Big Download (599 MB)

Valve launched its Steam download service with the release of its own game Half-Life 2 nearly five years ago. Since then the service has grown into one of the biggest, if not the biggest, service to download and purchase full PC games. It has hundreds of titles available from nearly every major PC publisher and has also opened up its service for independent game developers to offer their games via Steam. It has changed the way PC games are sold and, along with similar services, is slowly moving the PC game industry away from the brick-and-mortar retail store model.

But Valve is also a successful game developer and also sells its Source engine for third party developers to use. Does Valve's ownership of Steam ultimately become a problem for the PC game industry? Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford seems to think so. In a new interview with Pitchford for the November 2009 issue of the Maximum PC print magazine (now on newsstands), Pitchford says,"It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid. It's actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win."

In fact, developer/publisher Paradox Interactive did exactly that when launched its GamersGate PC game download service in 2006 and in 2008 spun off the that business into its own company. Stardock, yet another PC game developer/publisher, runs the Impulse PC download service that offers games from third parties.

Pitchford also believes that " . . . Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing. It's exploiting a lot of small guys." We've emailed Valve to see if they wish to respond to Pitchford's comments but so far have yet to hear back.

With this humorous "screenshot" above (at least we hope it's supposed to be a joke) Stardock has now announced that the first beta test of their upcoming fantasy RPG Elemental: War of Magic has now begun. If you still want to get in on the first phase of the beta, simply pre-order the full game from Stardock sometime before the end of September. After that, you can still pre-order the game but you will have to wait until Stardock begins the second phase of beta testing.

As Stardock CEO Brad Wardell mentions in another post about Elemental on the Impulse web site. " . . . beta 1 will NOT be fun in any way. We are not kidding about this. Our objective with this first build is to get the parameters on which the game runs, how well it runs." The beta will also use the game's cloth map as its basis rather than the more detailed 3D graphical engine.

The wait to get the second micro-expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire got closer this week when Stardock announced that they were taking pre-orders for Diplomacy via Impulse. The $9.99 expansion is expected to be officially released sometime in 2010 but its likely that anyone who pre-orders the expansion will be able to get into the game's beta test beforehand.

As Big Download reported earlier this month, Diplomacy will in fact be the last of the micro-expansion for the game. Stardock and developer Ironclad Games have a lot of ideas on how to continue and expand on Sins of a Solar Empire but those plans won't fit into a third micro-expansion. Details on those new plans have yet to be revealed.