That little pic of the new fantasy rts your making god u just love rubing it in WHAT IS IT!!?!?!?!? Otherwise nice update.

Great report.  Good to see you are looking at the survey and focusing on customer satisfaction.  Can't beat that business model!

Since the 'Strategy Game 2010' sounds like something completely new does that mean that Society has been canceled (which stinks since I was looking forward to it)?

There's multiplayer matchmaking in Impulse now?

The hand-drawn style style on Not-MOM looks nice, you tease.

What happened to the not requiring the CD to be in the drive part of the bill of rights?  It's a small thing, but quite nice I thought.

Wasn't this thread longer yesterday? Did I hallucinate a bunch of replies before Hawawaa's

It's a copy reposted here. Original.

Really, I have the power to remove replys YA KEEP ON HALLUCINATING! But sadly no... that would be cool...

Ah, as long as it's *deliberately* confusing

I actually read all of that, and my opinion is that I liked the wording of the original Gamer's Bill of Rights considerably more.  It is nice to see a little clarification on Stardock's stance on DRM too though, and I recently have been realizing just how big Stardock has become in just 15 years.  You must be proud, eh Brad?

My last thought was that you must really want a Java programmer.

Interesting read. For me, the most important aspect of Stardock and the one that differentiates it from most other corp's out there is that they take customers seriously and treat them with respect.

As a side note, I respectfully disagree with your stance on DRM. Although I fully appreciate your point of view, I think the whole issue must be looked at in the broader context. DRM is poised to become a pervasive element of every-day life used by the Big Boys to exhort and cheat honest people effectively enslaving them. Your observation that a customer buying at $50 doesn't 'own' the software might be true legally, but it it missing the point regarding what DRM is all about. I would consider this a valid complaint and principal matter.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a companys internal business plan.

I say you're right about the DRM stance. Owners or authorities need to see exactly WHO is using the software to prevent unauthorised use. And the cdkey for updates are just grand

About the types of games that we want you to create. I thought it would be a majority for the TBS games since you are like the only company that make those types of games. Other companies give us the other genres.

Am happy with the answers there though. Real-Time Role Playing games are really good (KotOR, Diablo, Sacred) though other companies have covered that good (Titan Quest and upcoming Diablo 3 f.i)

02:30 in the morning so I got to sleep. Will perhaps type a bit more tomorrow.

I agree with most of what was written in the document, but one thing caught my eye that I found odd.  It said some high percent of people want them to get rid of the impulse dock.  I, personally, actually really like how the impulse dock is laid out.  I have all of the hundreds of shortcuts, that used to be cluttering my desktop, organized into impulse dock tabs.  Perhaps there are better ones in existance, but this one is just fine.  To improve it, I would say adding the ability to place it where you want on the screen would be good.  Also replacing the windows sidebar would be good.  Launching the impulse program from the dock tends to freeze upon initial launch, but after an end task and relaunch it works fine.  Fixing that would be good.

But I see alot of potential with the impulse software and the dock.  I hope they dont get rid of it.  There is always the option to turn it off, so people who dont use it can just do that.

Congradulation Stardock. I am very impress by your company. Whith everything you do for the gaming industry and for your gamers and all gamers.

Keep up the good work.

PS The Not mom game.... I HATE YOU!!!  (such a small picture now I am dying for more)

Well, my first post here was about that and I don't think it's legally true at all. If a vendor sells software to me for $50 it's mine. No, not the intellectual property rights of course, but the copy of the software is mine, after all that's the item that was agreed being sold.

If some vendor denies you access to your property, wether it's by a "Accept license or shut up" or by actual DRM, you have even the right to force you access to your property. Take the DeCSS case: the entertainmaint industry tried to prosecute DeCSS author John Lech Johanssen, however, the Norwegian court ruled that John owned his DVD. Therefore, developing DeCSS to get access to the unencrypted data was considered legal, because John owned the DVD and thus the data, thus he had the right to force access to the unencrypted data which was his property.

DRM (in its traditional narrow definition of encrypting and allowing only trusted software/hardwere decrypt it) is fundamentally incompatible with the rights you have as an owner of a piece of software.

Basically the issue is as simple as: A company should have every right to protect its intellectual property but in doing so it should not prevent a customer to use his property in every way he likes. Basically Stardock understands this actually rather well, but sometimes you read some weird comments like the one you are referring to.

dmantione - that is demonstrably NOT true in the US. In fact, if the consumer did own the software, any DRM including Stardock's minimal approach would be considered illegal. It would create an unfair restriction on the secondary market, which would be an anti-trust violation.

If your national laws say otherwise, that could be an interesting legal battle, one that nobody could actually win. Either A ) the publisher gets raped, B )  your national law does, or C ) said publisher stops selling software in your country, which is a lose/lose for everyone.