Alstein

I would for one, find it really ironic if the FFH team made a Civ mod for Elemental.

Valve is a US company- US law would apply. One thing I'd be interested in is whether Valve did anything in violation of the Sherman Act. I strongly suspect 2K got some monetary gift from this.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="262" id="2616284"] What if Steam was just the best option? What other services allow sharing game saves across multiple computers, installing to different machines, unlimited download of the game/patches, access to the community and other players from within the game, and a way for a huge number of potential clients to be reached and purchase your product? Does Impulse really offer all that? Well first off, selecting Impulse (to answer your question

I can confirm this also.

[quote who="TCores" reply ="237" id="2615624"] Quoting Nick-Danger, reply 232 I want the old days where I'd start up a game, consult with my friends (voice program, IM, forum, etc.), one hosts and the others connect, and voila! -- we're playing. No third party. And updating being as simple as clicking on 'update' when firing up the game and it checks automatically, or perhaps I visit the game's site or similar repository and DL the patch and apply it myself

The question becomes whether Stardock is afraid a one Valve future would hurt their way of doing business. I honestly don't know if it would. I wouldn't want to put out with Valve DRM on non-Stardock games though, I'd probably just move more to console gaming in that case, and buy cheap laptops and get out of computer gaming except for old games. Have you considered putting say, Sins on steam, then making it use Impulse and allowing the Steam keys to be used

[quote who="Peace Phoenix" reply="214" id="2615035"] Quoting lackoo1111, reply 161Stardock should accept retail or digital CD keys without any region restriction. If they can make new contracks with the publishers they can survive,if not Stardock's Impulse will dissapear within 3 years. Well, Stardock is already offering this deal to publishers with Impulse. But none had accepted it.[/quote] I think Impulse can survive even a Steam monopoly.

I belong in group 3 myself, with a bit of group 1 and 2. Then again, group 2 is irrelevant without group 3, as an alternative to Steam means you wouldn't have to use Steamworks. I do think Steam is overrated, I play TF2 and that does stutter online frequently due to Steam. I don't like Steamworks much either, I don't like DRM that runs every time I play the time. That's why I crack games that I buy if I need to. (and why I

Just thought of something you guys could do. You could design/shape the modding of the game, such that it wouldn't be very hard to make a Civ mod for Elemental, and try to make the Civ mod be better than Civ 5. I know that's a goal of yours, but with this news, you could make it a higher priority.

It's quite possible that big cable will kill DD anyways with broadband caps. Then retail will take over again, as the usage fees for DD will be too high. I'd say Time Warner and Comcast are bigger threats to Stardock right now then Valve. I mean, in North carolina right now, Time Warner is trying to ban municipalities from building their own broadband networks like one town did in order to get rid of monopoly Cable. &n

[quote who="DeCypher00" reply="124" id="2613526"]I find all this fear of Steam becoming a big evil empire kind of funny. The only way I can see Impulse competing is if you guys get more aggressive with your tactics. I hardly buy anything from Impulse other than your exclusives, because I have no reason to visit Impulsedriven.com. Steam, I open every day so I can play TF2 and chat with my gaming buddies. Steam also has much better prices and sales on triple-A titles. I mean, I got B

[quote who="Chibiabos" reply="35" id="2612654"]Maybe I'm mis-understanding, but I didn't get from that post that Civilization V will be available only on Steam, but Steam will have an exclusive DLC.[/quote] Steamworks will be on all versions. Some folks are claiming that Impulse could still sell the game, but it would be really stupid to do so, since you'd be giving money to your competition. Also, if it wasn't on all versio

Why should that surprise you? This was a decision made to attack his business. If I was him, I'd be looking at lawyers potentially for a Sherman Act suit in the future. (not necessarily doing it, but looking at it)

[quote who="Haree78" reply="19" id="2612561"]Is a Developer who says "no, only our shop can sell our game" any different?[/quote] First-party can do that all they like. They're not doing it to lock others out of the market.

The question is will you guys be given a chance to be competitive in the market? You could get crushed by monopoly power- and you can't win a Sherman suit in the US these days.

[quote who="Haree78" reply="8" id="2612512"]I'm happy to say I have no idea what everyone in this thread's issue is.[/quote] This means Valve has kept anyone else from being able to sell this game, especially Stardock. Anticompetitive behavior.

I'm not crying, I'm just not buying. Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to do it. Besides, as people are saying above, we got EWOM. My wondering is what Brad Wardell is going to do about it- this is a slap in the face to Stardock (and Paradox)

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3792/ I wonder if this means Brad Wardell will stop working with Civ V. I just can't support DRM, that while not TOO bad, helps enforce a near-monopoly. This may be a blow to the other DD providers- as this is the biggest game to do this so far. Hopefully EWOM is everything I want, because now I'm relying on it. (Note: I do use Steam, I just won't support being forced to use it on non-Valve

Edit: fixed link, it works now

The important thing to me is that the factions feel unique. The Kingdoms could be one race, with the Empires being multiple races, including a race of man. I likrd that idea (which was the original idea, right?) GC2 didn't accomplish this until Twilight FFH2 is a good examplee of doing it right. Never assume that modding will take off, make the game lore good first.

Well, here's my take. I think it's wrong to assume people will use mods. Many don't. I'd rather have a fleshed out base game. I've learned never to underestimate modders- they'll find a way to do what they want to do, especially if things are open and documented. You can always improve modding via patch/expansion later on. It's harder to improve the base canon post-release. Go for the canon first, with the main twea

I can't wait for people to start modding this. I can just imagine what some people would do. Idea for easter egg: put Lord Kona into the game, or at least some form of Drengins- they're pretty much one of Stardock's mascots. Maybe a Drengin Mascot outfit?

debug.err below. Loading the saved game didn't cause issues- so you solved that problem. The second problem still remains though- load a game, head to main menu, try to start new game it crashes. DebugMessage: Version 0.298 last updated on: Thu Apr 8 16:22:30 2010 DebugMessage: Entering WinMain DebugMessage: ******* Starting Game Shell ******* DebugMessage: *********DXDiag info foll

Expansion material though, right? (It's ok to save some things for an expansion , you guys gotta make $110 off us, not just $50) ^_^

I'd like to see the other races returned also, but I am willing to wait for an expansion in that regard.