GameStop Buys Impulse From Stardock 109
Daetrin writes "It was announced Thursday that Stardock has sold Impulse, the digital game store, to GameStop. Stardock founder Brad Wardell gave an interview to Joystiq talking about the sale and the reasons behind it. GameStop also announced their acquisition of SpawnLabs, a game streaming company. It seems that GameStop is looking to challenge Steam, or at least avoid being cut out of the digital distribution business entirely."
Re:Might Save Impulse (Score:5, Insightful)
On average Impulse doesn't have base prices as cheap as Good Old Games.
On average Impulse doesn't have sales discounts as large as Steam
Impulse has more DRM than GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many really old games as GOG.
Impulse doesn't have as many big new games as Steam.
Impulse doesn't have achievements or community features like the Steam client does.
But Impulse does force you to use a client, unlike GOG.
I like Impulse, and i have bought a number of games from them, but they're certainly not the ones that i've bought the most games from. For just about any single category of comparison either Steam or GOG outperforms it. If it was just a competition between Impulse and _one_ of the other two they'd probably be doing pretty well for themselves, but as things stand...
Re:Steam is actually fine (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why Steam is successful: fanboys. It's like with Apple. Guys like you simply redefine things out of existence, even if they are as worse than elsewhere.
Steam IS DRM. It's online activation, tied to an online account, client-overhead laden, they-control-everything DRM. Sure there are some community features but first and foremost, Steam is DRM. Every single game on Steam contains one of the most restrictive DRMs.
If Ubisoft or EA do it, it's utmost evil. If Steam doesn it, hey it's not even DRM, it's rainbows, sunshine and happy fun time!