To Steam or not to Steam?

It will never be available on steam.

Reason being is that its a competitor to Stardock central / Impulse.

You can install stardock central, buy Sins, download, install the game. Just like on steam

If I had a dollar every time I hear this, I would be rich.
They are competition to steam, why would they do that?

I think that the whole idea of digital downloads are great and I definately save tons of space but why do I have to install so many different programs.

The only game Stardock has is "Sins" so why should I install another program just for that one game.

At least steam has tons of games.

Stardock actually has quite a few games available for purchase. You wont see SoaSE or GalCiv (or likely Demigod) on Steam because it makes no sense economically for Stardock to get them put there.

Just like you will never see any Valve game on another method of digital distribution.

Also you don't need Stardock instilled to play the games, unlike Stream. You only really need it for patchs, but I am sure you could find the patchs some where in the vastness of the internet.

There is a simple explanation why you will never see SoaSE on Steam. Stardock Central/Impulse is to Steam as Coke is to Pepsi. They are competitors. You would never see a Pepsi can come out of a Coke machine. (Unless the vendor has some twisted sick sense of humor.)

Actually one of my favorite restaurants does that.

So is that why there's so many fake copies flying around eBay then?

I played the demo and it's really awesome and can't wait to play the full game. The only thing that puts me off is 1) the whole gotta use Stardock and 2) The retail price is actually cheaper than the digital download price. although i wouldn't mind paying more to get it now.

So do I need Stardock installed to play "sins" online?

fileplanet has the patches. and yeah I know a vending machine that also does coke and pepsi

No, only to download it if you choose to go that route rather than retail. The updates are presently available via standalone patch, and unlike Steam, SDC/Impulse does not need to be running in the background, or even installed, to play the game.

The digital DL is the CE, so you also get mp3 music tracks, a few PDFs. The box from Stardock is also CE and you get the actual physical goodies. Both also get the Sins MyColors theme.

Stores carry the regular version.

Steam is a terrible program, and terrible service that somehow many people got sucked into using. I'd guess it was Half-life and everyone loving it. But Stardock is an impressive service that isen't required to run or even have it installed to play your games.

Stardock > Garbage > Steam

There was a time when Steam only had Halflife - 1 game. It could grow - and besides, if it's a more convenient way to get your downloads/updates and you don't need to run it while the game plays, why not?

I will agree that Steam is not perfect, however, it has made great leaps just in the past year alone. The friends service is really great, the auto-updating and all the steam community stuff is cool too. The one thing I wish they would do though, is keep a list of all your favourite servers on their end so if you reinstall steam you can instantaneously get all your faves back.

Stardock Central has dozens of games on it.  Besides the Stardock ones, there's a lot of third party titles.  I'm curious to know how many non-valve games the typical Steam user has.  It has COD and Bioshock and such and Company of Heroes and the like so there's a lot more games on Steam to be sure, but I suspect the # of Steam advocates who have more than a handful of non-Valve games that they bought through Steam is not particularly high.

Anyway, Sins won't be on Steam before Half Life 2 is on Impulse.

I've actually got 63 games on steam and thats not even half of their catalogue, i've just looked on stardock and theres about 12 games that both steam and stardock have.

The reason i like steam so much is that you don't have to install games or patch them. So whenever i need to reinstall windows i can just copy my games file over to a spare hard drive and then copy them back after the reinstall. No keys, no installing pains (insert disc 2, now 3, now 1, now 3 again. aaaahhhh the pain), no patching or updating, and all my saves and presets are there too. and if i ever have trouble running a game all i have to do is run the 'verify game files' and everythings fixed. ahhh heaven.

The amount of DVD drives i've killed from installing is insane.

I just wish i could get all my pc games on steam. I'd have tons of space.

and yes I am a game-a-holic

I think i'll get the retail version. Its not released over here for another 3 weeks.

But over here its £20 including postage, if I bought it from stardock its £38 including post but not including tax (sorry but i don't know how much your tax rate is).

so as you can see it's gonna cost me more than double and all i'll get is a poster and a CD. thats an expensive CD

avp2501:

Please take the time to understand what kind of product Stardock Central is before wishing that the game is on Steam.

Unlike Direct2Drive, Stardock Central is in every way (except for Steam Community, I grant) better than Steam.

Hey, I did think of one way Steam is better than SDC. Steam backups come with their own executable to restore, whereas SDC backups require you to restore through SDC.

So the app which you usually have open doesn't need to be, and the app which you usually don't have open needs to be.

My experience with Steam:

Half-life 2 demo: installed, registered, registered again, registered a 3rd time all the while going WTF do I need steam for a demo? 3 hours later it works and lets me play. Try playing again later, takes forever + a day to log in. Lost all interest after that. I also have some prior experience from way back in Team fortress classic, but don't remember much other then being kinda annoyed.

My experience with Stardock: Installed SDC and downloaded GalCiv2 without problems. Same with Dark Avatar, Cellblock Squadrons, Jets'n'Guns, Sins and Twilight of Arnor. Was also pleasantly surprised when I could register and download my long-ago purchased copy of GalCiv1. No delays other then the actual downloading (and that wasn't too long) and I was playing all them without problems.

Now I really hope that Steam doesn't distribute Sins (or any other Stardock published/developed game).

I have Deus EX 1, and 2. Nexus the jupiter incident(Which I highly recommend if you like tactical starship combat ala Starfleet Command), and Vampire the masquerade. The only time I would use a digital download service would be for older games I could no longer find at retail. If stardock was able to come up with digital download rights to System Shock 2, I would buy this instantly. This is a market that right now is under served. Older AAA titles at reasonable prices, I would buy these via download in a heartbeat.

I agree with the retro titles. I've got hundreds of old games that i just dont want to get rid of but they take up so much space, i would be glad to change them into digital versions. and its not like hard drive space is a issue anymore because you get so much space for peanuts.

I would like to se more game on steam just becouse i use it very mutch, stardock have kind of the same system, so i do not argue about it,

And alot of the games on steam is very good, buts its very rare that i buy them on steam.




agree have lots of game that i would like to turn to digital copys. i have made a few img files that i have upplodad on a private tracker so i can access them anytime, but this takes a lot of time and space on my server. so why not use steam and stardocks systems....

hey are stardock and steam competitors or something?

Yes, they are