"Our job as CEOs is to maximize our profit... my job is to increase our sales, not eliminate worldwide piracy."

Mod that +5 Insightful.

Aside from the fact that Sins of a Solar Empire appeared to be a great game from reviews, videos and screenshots, it is leadership decisions like this that add to the many reasons I chose to purchase it, and will likely continue to purchase quality games from Stardock in the future.

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Nice public relations save, Brad Wardell.

In the past, you've been able to bolster your sales by appealing to disgruntled gamers.  You have done so by "taking their side" and criticizing DRM--this in turn makes them supportive of you and thus more likely to buy your games.  I should know, that was a significant factor behind my purchase of SoaSE: Collector's Edition.

Recently though, you performed a complete 180 on us--disregarding several months of precedent and your incomplete/invalid SoaSE EULA, you suddenly decided to stop distributing stand-alone patches and force all of your customers (the ones that want updates) on your online store/DRM program, Impulse.

As a note, your customers have already paid for the updates with the full expectation of being able to receive them without any strings or programs attached—this is also discussed in “Rights #3, 7, 8” in your “Gamer's Bill of Rights”.

And now, you criticize merely copy protection--no longer DRM.  As before, nice save. Still, that is a superficial public relations gesture, at best.  To illustrate this, consider your latest tightrope act--putting DRM on CD's are bad, but it's perfectly fine to use DRM via Impulse, which you're trying to link everything to.  That's a pretty hard tightrope to walk--ultimately, you must accept that information is freely distributable on the Internet (both the disk and patches) and that you should make money on the quality of your games/actions as a developer, or that you should clamp down on all forms of media distribution, milk all the potential revenue possible, and baby-feed the customers that haven't deserted by now.

You see, people don't like copy protection because they like to really "have" what they bought.  That's why people like to buy real cars, real houses, etc. People like real patches too.  Anything else is just a scheme that keeps people hooked on your business model--there are many articles discussing the direct correlation between increased customer lock-in, increased profit, and increased customer maltreatment.

(somebody may bring up that many people rent apartments--that is an issue related to finance, not preference) 

The fact that you still try to pretend that you're on the customers' side in this whole DRM conflict (anti-DRM/whatever in word), but in reality you continue to implement more forms of DRM through your software (pro-DRM/whatever in deed) indicates two things--your hypocrisy and your customer baiting.

Although, considering that ultimately your job is to “maximize (y)our profit”, maybe we should have seen that coming.

Reminding you that you can still do the right thing,

Venym

p.s.  Regarding the whole console argument, read it for what it is--propaganda and a scam, just like Brad's exploitation of customer anger against copy-protection.  There are plenty of PC games that are "finished" when they are released without the need for a customer leash--for instance, Blizzard games, World in Conflict, Dawn of War, etc.  In fact, piracy is actually helpful to customers--it lets them try out the full game (often minus multiplayer), see which ones are good, and if they like the game enough (especially if they want to play multiplayer), they'll happily buy the game.  No tricks; both the company and the customer are happy.

p.p.s.  Censorship isn't the way to deal with this issue.

p.p.p.s.  Here's a good article on customer "lock-in", specifically regarding software industries.  Article on Customer Lock-in, by Bruce Schneier

Explain how Stardock's system makes it difficult to switch to a competing product. You can switch to a different game with no issue. You can switch to a different delivery system (such as Steam or whatever other one you may want to get games) with no issue. So please, enlighten us on how the Stardock model conforms to the definition of customer lock-in.

To start, let's define Impulse and Steam as two different products/services which both compete as digital distribution platforms.

Say that you bought a lot of games on Impulse, but for some reason you chose to switch over to Steam.  Well, the games that you bought are "stuck" or "locked-in" to Impulse--there's absolutely no way that you can take the existing products that you bought through Impulse and switch them over to a different "support" system/product/service.  For products that were released on CD, you can "kinda" add them to Steam, but with limited/no support for them.  Likewise, try removing Team Fortress 2 from Steam and adding it to Impulse--same problem, if not much worse.

It's very comparable to the IPhone and many other phones in the North American market--say that you bought an IPhone, and you want to switch from AT&T to Verizon.  Hah hah, good luck.

As a result of this difficulty, customers can do one of two things--get full refunds for all of their games/repurchase them all on another distribution platform (which sounds arduous if not impossible), or stick with the existing service.  Hence, customer "lock-in".

Impulse and Steam are nearly identical in function/purpose--they are both DRM mechanisms used to "lock-in" their customers.  However, the major point of my previous reply was to criticize Stardock's two-faced marketing (anti-DRM in word and pro-DRM in deed), which in other industries is called false advertising and is punishable by U.S. Federal Law.

Amen,

to bad nobody will bother reading it..... especially those who should.....

text-based conversations can be so dammed unfair -.-

His rant was read the first time, and the second, and maybe the third time. But by this point he's aptly demonstrated that he doesn't care about logic or reason, he's just going to have at it anyway. Including:

-His fallacious claims that the EULA is invalid--which if true, would strip him of any license to use the game, given court holdings by *actual* legal experts.

-That he paid for updates--they are provided freely as a courtesy; the game is what you paid for and was provided as-is. That is not to say that we don't fully intend to provide regular and substantial updates for all of our products, however, we are under zero legal obligation to do so. We are completely within our rights to offer them on our own terms, considering we're doing so entirely at our own expense.

-And primarily, his senseless lock-in argument--Impulse and Steam are hardly mutually exclusive to the customer, and asking one to support the other is like buying a product at one store and asking another to fulfill the warranty or take a return. It might work in some theoretical world where support is provided for free by volunteer gnomes and bandwidth is infinite, but not in this one.

As you've been told so many times, no, it is not at all comparable. A phone signal is a generic service based upon industry standard protocols, and supporting one phone is little or no different from supporting any other which is standards compliant. The iPhone is only limited to AT&T because they heavily subsidize the hardware and must recoup their costs.

Software support, on the other hand, is very much on a per-product basis. Only the creator can make updates, and distributing them costs money and takes specific work for each new one for each and every product. It is not free for the provider either, if different from the creator. To use the iPhone analogy, something more comparable would be to expect someone else to provide official firmware updates than Apple. Which is hardly lock-in by any sane definition.

I'll read it when he starts making sense and not pull arguments out of thin air that hold water just as well.

Wasn't the original account banned?

Besides, I believe we are on the fifth time now.

The iPhone can be unlocked from the service to AT&T anyways, so you can kiss that argument good bye.

any phone can be servicible to any service. but enough of that! NEW TOPIC

Just a few thoughts on posts here:

From Venym1 (such an appropriate name, given the contents of his posts):

"Recently though, you performed a complete 180 on us--disregarding several months of precedent and your incomplete/invalid SoaSE EULA, you suddenly decided to stop distributing stand-alone patches and force all of your customers (the ones that want updates) on your online store/DRM program, Impulse."

Um...I don't know if this helps, but a) I downloaded (and still do download) my updates to SoaSE for free, without having to pay anything, b)nowhere have I found simple patches for sale, and c) trying to claim that patches are not free because potential expansions must be bought is sort of like claiming that a construction company has to build another hundred stories of skyscraper because you already bought the first 3, and have decided you wanted more.  It's a stupid arguement, and the fact that you made it says many things about your intelligence, fair-mindedness, and level of maturity.  None of the things thus said, however, are in any way good, and I certainly wouldn't want them said about me--clearly, however, this is not the case for you.

Venym1 says:  "As a note, your customers have already paid for the updates with the full expectation of being able to receive them without any strings or programs attached—this is also discussed in “Rights #3, 7, 8” in your “Gamer's Bill of Rights”.
And now, you criticize merely copy protection--no longer DRM.  As before, nice save. Still, that is a superficial public relations gesture, at best.  To illustrate this, consider your latest tightrope act--putting DRM on CD's are bad, but it's perfectly fine to use DRM via Impulse, which you're trying to link everything to.  That's a pretty hard tightrope to walk--ultimately, you must accept that information is freely distributable on the Internet (both the disk and patches) and that you should make money on the quality of your games/actions as a developer, or that you should clamp down on all forms of media distribution, milk all the potential revenue possible, and baby-feed the customers that haven't deserted by now."

Meaningful updates...what ARE meaningful updates?  Simply the correction of unforeseen problems, the efforts to balance factions (or whatever) in an ongoing attempt to make sure that the game is not completely dominated by whomever is the first to pick a particular side/weapon/combo/whatever is relevant?  Making a serious (and costly) effort to find bugs that, despite over 2000 hours of testing in some cases, have STILL made it through the screens, and which are showing up now--for FREE?!  Is this not meaningful enough for you?  Do you now demand that all companies annoint their routine patches for re-balancing and maintaining the games be annointed in the blood of unwed virgins, in addition to being distributed over servers provided (for free), and a network for multi-player games to be played (for free), AND the actual creation of the game, an effort that can take anywhere from six months to six years?

Or are you simply whining--for that's what this is, make no mistake--that the expansion, which represents another six months to two years of programmers' and designers' lives simply gone, with no way to get anything other than memories from that time, has not been expended so that you can get what often may amount to an entirely different game for free?  Karl Marx would have been proud...but somehow I don't think you'll get people to do this outside of a Marxist fantasyland.

Venym1 said:  "You see, people don't like copy protection because they like to really "have" what they bought.  That's why people like to buy real cars, real houses, etc. People like real patches too.  Anything else is just a scheme that keeps people hooked on your business model--there are many articles discussing the direct correlation between increased customer lock-in, increased profit, and increased customer maltreatment."

Wow...the closest you've come on this topic to making sense, and you're still so far, far away.  People don't dislike copy protection because they want to actually "have" it.  They've got the computer, they've got the manual, they've got the accessories, and they've got the CD.  Let's face it--all happy game-industry fairy tales to the contrary, they now "have" the game in every sense that is meaningful, and can do whatever they want with it, even if that means that they upload it to the internet and distribute it for free all over the world.  Companies may be able to get a cease and desist order...but they can't physically stop it from happening.

The reason, the REAL reason people don't like copy protection as it is practiced today is 3-fold:  it is massively inconvenient (especially for some methods--Earth 2160 and Half-Life 2 spring to mind), it is based on the assumption that all the people who have PAID for the game already are nonetheless criminals, and it is, ultimately, meaningless.  The beauty of the Internet means that I can upload the information and distribute it to anybody I want, and nobody can practically stop me.  The only reason I don't is because I want game companies to KEEP making those games I play, and uploading etc is only going to get in the way of that.  People break copy protection on such a wide scale today simply out of spite--treat customers like, well, customers, and a lot of the temptation will go away.  Not all of it, of course, for gaming companies over the past 10 years have made certain of that, but much of it will.

Kyro--"A phone signal is a generic service based upon industry standard protocols, and supporting one phone is little or no different from supporting any other which is standards compliant.
...
Software support, on the other hand,is very much on a per-product basis.  Only the creator can make updates, and distributing them costs money and takes specific work for each new one for each and every product.

Actually, software could be updated by people other than the creator.  We just expect the creator to do it as part of the expectation that we bought something that actually works.  Witness all the 3rd-party mods to existing games--if those don't qualify as updates, I don't know what does.

The difference is that, unlike 3rd party updates, the game's creator is responsible for the game functioning, and already has a pretty good idea of what must be going wrong when a bug shows up, so they can fix it more cheaply.  Again, to extend the iPhone analogy--Apple could provide all the firmware updates itself...or it could simply pick and choose among user-generated updates, and use the best of them as the "official" updates.