Sins of a Solar Empire
Once up on a time there was a independent software delveloper that was famous for it’s good policies towards customers. They had made several good games that contained no copyright, DRM or any crap to scare off gamers. They took good care of all paying customers.
Not long ago they made the game ”Sins of a solar Empire”. A 4X game that played more like RTS. It looked good and played equally good.
No DRM, no crippleware and such crap. You had to use your serial to download patches from the game website. That was it. Excellent initiative. The game sold VERY well indeed.
But around version 1.05 and later something happened. I’ve not been able to find out what for sure. But Stardock launched their online platform (think Steam) ”Impulse”. Suddenly games and software was encapsulated in some strange way. Also you had to have IE7 and .NET 2.0 event to install the main platform. And if you did not you could not install or download new expansions OR patches any more. Gone was the download option via the game web site and suddenly it became irritatingly difficult to upgrade.
And I thought to my self: Well another game developer who can not keep it’s viritual hands off the products they sell. They simply want to controll all avenues of download and this allways complicates and restricts access of the buyer/gamer. Without exceptions.
So this game is nothing I support anymore, or any other title of theirs for that matter. If they keep meddling like this, I simply keep my hard earned money. I will still play SOASE but only up to version 1.05, and I will never buy the expansions.
”Impulse” sucks major crap. It is buggy like you would not belive. Many have huge problems with it. You also have to install IE7 and .NET 2.0, which is a HUGE no-no if you want to keep a slim gaming rig with as few installed things in it (except games naturally). Not even Steam demands any thing else but the main platform software.
So this is the saga of Stardock. Once a customer friendly developer. Now a simple DRM hugging peddler of computer software. R.I.P