Impulse to be bought by Gamestop

The bane of gamers everywhere (or so it would appear from the internet) is on line to buy Impulse from Stardock. so, I wonder if their sales and whatnot will continue, or if under the reign of gamestop, it become an MSRP paradise. who knows?

[quote name='GameStop']GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), the world's largest multichannel video game retailer, today announced the acquisition of Spawn Labs, a streaming technology company. In addition, GameStop announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase Impulse, Inc., a subsidiary of Stardock Systems, Inc., and a leader in digital distribution. The Impulse acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in May 2011.[/quote]

Official Announcement

Kotaku article

According to the faq on the Impulse front page, it looks like it will operate independently for a little while. I'm sure it'll take some time for Gamestop to integrate Impulse into its operations.

This makes me shake my head that Stardock has come to this. As a business, Impulse and its predecessor, Stardock Central, had a clear first mover advantage as a digital distributor. It was basically the first game content delivery system, many years before Steam. For many years, Stardock led the innovation in content delivery and patching. They were also very consumer friendly. It it was left up to them, I think Stardock would have stayed away from restrictive DRM.

Sadly, I think this stance against DRM is one of the reasons Steam eventually took over the dominant position in the market. Impulse/Stardock had a multi-year head start, the technology, the consumer-friendliness, and independence (Stardock games pose no competition to the big publishers) to become the dominant business. Instead, Gabe Newell became the billionaire.

I would love to have been in Stardock's position in 2000. It's only been in the last few years that my experience with Steam has been better than Impulse. Stardock had a very good chance to be where Steam is now. Even now, I think Impulse has a chance to compete with Steam. Stardock must be hurting financially, or maybe they received a very good unsolicited offer. If I owned Impulse, I would have kept fighting. Digital Distribution is a growing market, and Stardock Central was an app store before there was a term for an app store.

Well, it could be good, it could be bad.

On the plus side, Gamestop is trying to (in a serious capacity) enter the DD world. More competition is usually a good thing.

On the negative side, GS has been known to do exclusive content for buying from them. Want to get this power up or some secret GS only level? Preorder on GamePulse! (I'm so clever) Thus far, it seems Steam hasn't fallen in to this too much aside from TF2 hats and extra/discounted games thrown in to the mix which I'm pretty happy with.

I sort of fear for my Impulse games I already have. If they take away my ability to play without the client, I'll be really disappointed. That was the one appeal Impulse had over Steam for me.

I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

[quote name='mbstuff']...
I would love to have been in Stardock's position in 2000. It's only been in the last few years that my experience with Steam has been better than Impulse. Stardock had a very good chance to be where Steam is now. Even now, I think Impulse has a chance to compete with Steam. Stardock must be hurting financially, or maybe they received a very good unsolicited offer. If I owned Impulse, I would have kept fighting. Digital Distribution is a growing market, and Stardock Central was an app store before there was a term for an app store.[/QUOTE]

I don't think they would get rid of Impulse if they were having money troubles. According to the 2010 Stardock Consumer Report Impulse was their most profitable division.

In 2010, Impulse experienced phenomenal growth, becoming Stardock’s most profitable business unit. While its
trails market leader, Steam, by a large margin, its user base and revenue growth insure that it has a very bright future.

Click to expand...

Source

I'm worried what will happen to Impulse's no DRM stance and the Gamer's Bill of Rights with GameStop at the helm. They haven't really shown much love to PC gamers in the past.




Edit - Just found another article:

Wardell told us that the idea of selling Impulse began when it became clear that the download service was generating more and more revenue for Stardock. He told us that he did not have any desires to run a larger company and as such the deal with GameStop to sell off the Impulse business came at a good time. Wardell told the deal is a win for PC gamers as a whole as GameStop is moving more and more aggressively into the PC game download business.

Click to expand...

Source

Wardell didn't want to run a large company that is making a lot of profit? Sounds a bit fishy.

This doesn't bode well....

if GS stops the sales, they'll never compete with Steam. But GS could muscle the Publishers to go only with them, exclusive access and such.... make it so no other company can carry said Digital version.

BAD NEWS BEARS!

April fool's?

No?

Hm........

[quote name='Xealot42']Wardell didn't want to run a large company that is making a lot of profit? Sounds a bit fishy.[/QUOTE]

I don't know about that. Many professional sell off companies when they get too big. It can be for many reasons...the many issue I have seen is the issue of family life vs office life. When a company gets too big you can find yourself spending more hours there than home and that in and of itself can be a strong motive to sell.

Could also be that going big will contradict their value system. As the company grows profit overrides all decisions and values.

[quote name='xycury']This doesn't bode well....

if GS stops the sales, they'll never compete with Steam. But GS could muscle the Publishers to go only with them, exclusive access and such.... make it so no other company can carry said Digital version.

BAD NEWS BEARS![/QUOTE]

I don't think GS would have enough incentive for publishers to exclusive with them when releasing on Steam could give them many more sales. As a publisher, wouldn't you want your game to be on as many platforms as possible? I just see Steam as such a big player in the market, I just can't see a publisher only making his game for Impulse.

[quote name='Megazell']I don't know about that. Many professional sell off companies when they get too big. It can be for many reasons...the many issue I have seen is the issue of family life vs office life. When a company gets too big you can find yourself spending more hours there than home and that in and of itself can be a strong motive to sell.

Could also be that going big will contradict their value system. As the company grows profit overrides all decisions and values.[/QUOTE]

While this may be true. I too have my doubts about this. If you visit forums that have pc gamers from outside North America, you'll see that Impulse is a third rate service. They've pretty much written off, either by intent or by poor negoitiating skills, foreign markets. That alone makes them a much smaller player than Steam, D2D or even sites like Gamersgate or GOG.

While Impulse may be profitable, I don't think it was profitable enough for Stardock to deal with it. So Stardock found someone with big money who wants to become a big player in digital delivery. Game Stop needs to do this to protect future profits. And buying an already established business allows them to do this.

I actually don't have any problems with this. Game Stop didn't mess wtih Kongergate and can only improve Impulse. Honestly any service that can offer Steam real competition is great (I detest monopolies). I look forward to an improved Impulse and new players like Amazon in the dd marketplace.

I think it's possible that the massive failure of Elemental might have put Stardock in a financial bind. It's not uncommon to see companies sell the most profitable units/divisions during crises; they are worth the most after all. Still, I'll take Wardell's statement at face value. As a lazy slacker myself, I can relate to the idea of exiting a business to focus on making software, which I presume Wardell enjoys more than running the digital distribution.

I just think it has been a massively missed opportunity. If I had been running Stardock in 2000, I would have expanded beyond selling apps and games. Stardock Central had a subscription service based on tokens. They are the earliest digital subscription service I ever used - earlier than iTunes, Netflix, Audible, etc.

They could have been so much ahead of everybody else - branch out into music, movies, whatever. Impulse wasn't even aggressive in going after the games market. There's no reason why Steam won out over Impulse in market share. Steam was just more aggressive in developing its infrastructure, marketing and signing up publishers.

I'm sure Wardell will receive a crapload of money. I wouldn't be surprised if the selling price was over $100 million. Still, he could have done so much more with it.