Steamworks is good.

Does anyone realize that Impulse is a COMPETITOR to Steam? Seriously? "You should sell Steamworks games".

Steam _won't allow it_. It's not that Impulse doesn't want the games, it's because Steamworks has such a large user base that they say "Use us and no one else. If you use someone else we'll stop selling your game and you'll lose our massive player base."

if Steam wants a game exclusive to them, they typically get it. And any game that looks like it'll make lots of money = Steam wants it exclusive to them.

That doesn't make the person a moron, but it does make them look uninformed to people that know these things.

If I had a nickel for everyone that doesn't know how things work with Steam and Impulse...

It means its exclusive to steamworks API. Meaning no matter where you buy it your FORCED to use steam to play your game. (which is why those game services will eventually collapse by making people use their competitors services pushing their customers to steam since you have to use steam no matter who you buy it from, so people may as well cut out the middle man and just buy from steam.)

But w.e another game that won't get my money. (not like i would support 2k after the civ V mess anyway cause lets be honest.. they are just gonna milk the duke nukem brand name for a quick profit and leave users wondering wtf happened.)

Is it possible? sure. Will it happen? doubtful.

Some copies of football manager had steam as optional.. so its entirely possible. However i doubt 2k would do anything similar.

well thats just silly.. its brilliant business sense to have your competitors sell products that forces their customers to use your services, which just so happens to include the retail portion of your services in the same account they are forced to make.

The crazy ones are the guys who run gamers gate and D2D etc who think its a good idea to sell products that literally require your customers to create an account at your competitors store to play. Selling steamworks integrated games isn't gonna help you compete with steam in the long run.. short term increase in sales if your lucky. You can tell D2D is going down.. they've moved in to renting PC games now.. lol.

(not very funny actually cause i have quite a few games through D2D. I don't  purchase from them anymore because half their new games are steamworks games ..but whatcha gonna do eh?)

Steam picks and chooses the games it wants to rope people into giving them exclusive access to. Every new game is a new contract that may or may not be constraining to the publisher. I never said using Steamworks makes a game Steam exclusive. No where in my post.

Steamworks is a competitor, meaning anything that is "Steamworks integrated" means you'll have to have Steam anyway. Meaning Impulse would be selling games that would make a person install a competing software for digital distribution.

Example:

Assassins Creed
Devil May Cry 4
King's Bounty
Divinity II
Disciples III
Call of Duty 4
Company of Heroes
Elven Legacy

These games are sold in Steam but also in Impulse and all over the Digital Distribution Market. These are not Steamworks games. Steamworks means Steam is integrated into the game itself.

Steamworks Games (Yes, some of these are not released yet, but if you're familiar with DD you know they typically have placeholders for upcoming games - I got this list from the Wikipedia Steamworks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Steam_titles where it shows which are actually steamworks games and which are not):

Dungeon Siege 3
Dota 2
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy
Dino D-Day: Episode 1
Portal 2
Nuclear Dawn
Natural Selection 2
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Guess what? I put each of these into the search engine on http://www.gamersgate.com/, and no hits. Now you go to D2D, and guess who owns them? http://corp.ign.com/ - IGN, game review giant.

They don't make the majority of their money from selling games, they make it from advertising. No way Steam will screw over guys that give their games good reviews, and no way IGN cares if the game is Steamworks or not - They're not actually competitors on anything that's a major profit. Certainly, D2D makes money, but Steamworks gets money from them and each of the games on Steamworks gives IGN copies of their games to review, and pay for advertising on various sites, etc.

As far as other digital distribution companies:

EA and Microsoft are big enough to not care what Steamworks says or does. Hence Steamworks sells games that are also sold on EA and Microsoft. Since they're game producers, then they're making money whether they sell the game or Steam sells the game.

I did a search for the Steamworks games previously mentioned on WildTangent, GameHouse, GameTap, and GameAgent. Nothing.

From the link you posted: "Duke Nukem Forever will incorporate Steamworks" - Meaning it will likely be Steam exclusive on Digital Distribution, and even if Valve doesn't force them to stay with Steam (Since Duke Nukem Forever will be popular enough it could stand on its own), 2K Games wants to use Steamworks because they're so anti-piracy and Steam is pretty well its own DRM.

Sure, there's a choice to release Steamworks titles, but then Impulse customers would be installing Steam. A lot of people like Impulse because it's _not_ Steam.

But back to the point, being, OP's point is invalid. I've tried to provide as much info as I can to help with enlightenment. If you don't wish to read it, that's fine, but not only is the OP's point invalid, but

is invalid as well.

This.

Yep. Indeed we can. Also, didn't mean to type so much - Chugged a bunch of caffeine and it's my day off. Also, I didn't clarify quite as much as I should have in my original post - I know that there was a controversy previously with Steam getting exclusive release rights for Digital Distribution for Civ V (Don't know what ended up happening with that) and that wasn't anything to do with Steamworks. The steamworks issue is more from the game requiring Steamworks to run. Now honestly, I have Steam installed. I don't mind it, I kill it unless I'm running Magicka or Left 4 Dead 2.

Those with lower end systems loathe Steam for this fact. I'm only running Chrome with five tabs and it's at 98K memory usage. Steam is running on my task bar, idling, and pulling 67k. As soon as I run Magicka and use things that interact with Steam, it skyrockets and begins taking a lot of CPU power. For me it's not an issue, my computer handles things pretty well, but people are upset because of the forced additional memory footprint, DRM issues, and just not wanting Steam in the first place to play something they paid for with their money. (Since I'm not quite on the anti-steam bandwagon, just keep up on some of it, I don't know if I hit the nail on the head or not).

Also, I like discussing things and debating - In no way was I trying to start an argument over anything, I just investigated when you put the statement on other Digital Distribution companies selling Steamworks games and posted my findings on it. But my original point is that Stardock isn't out of the ordinary on not carrying Steamwork games, and they're not really losing out on anything, even if it's perceived that they are.

I miss the days of just downloading directly from the manufacturers, or being able to register demo versions with serial numbers you purchase. No registrations or user names, just an email you receive or a letter in the mail. I know, piracy has everyone paranoid, but I still miss it. </3

In my opinion, the only way Stardock will lose out by not selling Steamworks titles is by people having to install Steam separately and browse those games on Steam. They are very anti DRM and because of the way Steam is handled, it's very much like a DRM in itself, and so Stardock would go against its principles by distributing games with a forced Steam install.

Am I rambling? I can't tell. >.<

Or Direct2Drive. Or GamersGate. Or Amazon, Gamestop, Wal-Mart, etc.

Only D2D has actual "Steamworks" titles, because it's run by IGN that doesn't compete with Steam. Gamersgate does not, and Amazon isn't a Digital Distribution company. Gamestop and Walmart sell physical copies and don't compete with Steam, but the physical copies still force the install of Steam.

Impulse will not have Steamworks titles, and trying to make statements saying other Digital Distribution companies provide Steamworks titles without actually pointing to evidence is not really helping the case. Steamworks and Steam are different things entirely.

But I already covered this. Bleh.

Swords & Soldiers
DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue
Flight Control HD
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Sid Meier's Civilization V
Mafia II

All Steamworks, none on Gamersgate (I typed the titles as posted here into the search engine) - I did find a few that were "Steamworks enabled" (Like Football Manager), but not actually built with the Steamworks API. I also found games that are past the  6-month/year mark. But those are past the initial profit period and also would still require the installation of Steamworks. I'm assuming the delayed release on the ones that are past the initial profit period are due to Steam related contracts preventing alternate Digital Distribution releases, but I'm not sure on the internal workings of such publishings.

Edit: >.> I'm going to go away for a while. This is one of the active threads today and I've been having my way with it for hours. >.< I'll be back tomorrow.

I think the reason why many games are jumping on board with Steam (or is that jumping into bed with?) is the herd mentality.  Oh they're great, everyone uses them, gotta get our game on it, who cares if it can't be sold without Steamworks integration?

Best regards,
Steven.