No no no No!  At least steam is a privatly held company. I won't use steam and passed on Civ5 over issues of privacy, security, reliabilty, and license ownership.  If I don't trust steam how can I trust a corporate entity!?  Particularly one who just last month got slapped with a class action lawsuit for their handling of customer credit card info!?!  And one who last year faced a suit for deceptive DLC advertising!?!  A company who's been sued by its own employees at least twice for unpaid overtime!  etc.

Bah! I hope this isn't so.  If it is, then I may close my Impulse account.  I'll lose Elemental and Fallen Enchantress, but count myslef lucky that I learned of this before making my planned purchase of GalCiv2 and Sins.  And what about Object Desktop?  Will the only way to get it be through Gamestop?

Man I hope this is just an April Fools joke.  It's gotta be.  All this Stardockian talk about the benefits of being a privatly held company and owning their own online distribution.  Don't tell me all that talk was just marketing cheese.  It meant something more than just selling me on a game... right?

Beat me to it, but yeah.

As for Gamestop being a good/bad thing:

1.  Corporations are not all evil.

2.  Almost anything that provides Steam with competition is a good thing.

3.  Gamestop has a lot of anti-gamer PR.
     - They could screw over customers in new, exciting ways.
     - They could use this as an opportunity to fix their image.

You do know that Stardock is a corporate entity, right?

Hmm, missed that. Then to sell that they probably decided it was drawing attention away from the other parts of the business, and/or Gamestop showed up with a dumptruck full of cash. Gamestop is a $3 billion market cap company with $377 million in net profit last year. If they were serious about wanting Impulse they could bring significant cash to the table. They could also offer Stardock better placement for titles in stores for X years, or some such.

Nothing was announced in terms of what was actually paid, and it might never be since Stardock is private and the terms could require that. But maybe not. Gamestop is public and having a conference call about it April 4. Might want to listen in on the webcast if you're really interested.

Bottom line for me:  Gamestop's been sued for ripping off their employees, abusing customer payment data, advertising bogus DLC bundles, selling used games as new, ripping off customers with a hidden monthly payment scam, selling roach infested product, and more.  I trust Stardock with my credit card info and to manage my software usage license.  I do_not trust Gamestop!   They have an ugly history.  I won't place my credit card, or my products in the hands of an entity so untrustworthy.

This is the most depressing news that actually made me cry.

Then archive your games and an install of pre-Gamestop Impulse to a disc, and do not have the internet running while installing. Then you can continue to use your games without dealing with GameStop.

If your are worried about credit card numbers, they disapear from the servers 24 hours after the payment goes through.

 OK, so now how do I get the archived copy of my purchased games again?

I really now want to store all my game setups on my HDD!

Open Impulse, select the game, right click and pick "Archive Application". To set where they will be sent, go to Folders under the advanced Impulse options. You may want to also set it to prompt before installing Impulse updates & burn an install disc for Impulse.

Edit:

The good new is those that have already been installed do not seem to need to be redownloaded.

Stunning news.   Hopefully all of the Elemental stable continues unabated, if not perhaps somehow bolstered---but wow, Gamestop of all companies!?

I would never have guessed Impulse changed in this direction away from the "split" style like Gamersgate/Paradox and GoG/CDPROJECKT have going.

Strange times ahead....not even sure how to process this.

E:WOM's not yet complete!  To get the updates which fix the memory issues, and to get the content which fleshes out the game, I would have to have Gamestoppers version of Impulse.  And if I close my Impulse account, I won't get my bundled copy of Fallen Enchantress.  And I do want to close my account if an entity such as Gamestop takes over.  I've reached a point in my life that I won't stand for corporate blood sucking bullshit anymore.  The US legal and government systems are epic fail in regards to consumer protection.  So I fight the blood suckers the only way I legally can... I vote with my wallet.  I won't empower known frauds by doing business with them.  It matters not how enticing the product may be.  If it is being peddled by bloodsucking bandits, I'll have nothing of it.   And I would say that the fraud, scams, and ripoffs that gamestop has been repeatedly involved with; does correctly categorize their behavior as that of bloodsucking bandits.

 This most recent lawsuit (filed just a month ago) alleges that Gamestop did not delete Personal Identification Information, customer name and credit card number.  As the suit plays out we will learn if there is something to this or not.  However, what we already know as matter of public record, is that Gamestop has been fraudulent with its customers and employees.  It has faced numerous suits, with repeated occurrence.  If I were to accept being sold out to Gamestoppers, all of my existing customer data will be in their hands.  With their track record this is not something I want.  And with their history of scamming their customers, I do not want my software usage license to be pwned by them.  We don't yet know how they will manage our access to our software.  But looking at their history, I surmise they will be more steam like than Stardock like.  

BTW does installing an archived version mean you get to skip activation? If not they can still force you to use the new gamestop client.

Lastly this means its only a matter of time before steamworks titles are sold via impulse.. Looks like steam wins. Guess if i'm stuck with dealing with this BS i may as well use steam since at least i know valve won't sell steam.(and I fking hate steam..but valve may be the lesser of 2 evils )