Just launched my impulse app to buy a game and what do i see? No app purchase anymore...ok, i go to the purchase internet page and now it says only purchases in the US...what the?
Thank you very much Stardock for abandoning what used to be a great alternative to steam....
I used to be pro Impulse in the hayday, bacl when it was StarDock central. Was really sad when they sold it. But in retrospect I think that was a good move. Everyone was moving on to Steam anyway.
Impulse was sold to Gamestop. If you download the Gamestop App you should have all of your content and be able to download from them. If you really wanted to that is.
I can still install my games but can't buy any new one. I always prefered Impulse over Steam...i don't like all this thing about renting games....
As has been said impulse was sold to gamestop some years ago. Haven't tried to purchase anything through it for a while though I assume gamestop are still running so you might have another issue. Impulse was fine but when it was sold to gamestop I gave up on it. Steam I find is pretty good and beats the other online software shops hands down though in it's day Impulse was a good competitor.
I do however think it was a smart move of Stardock to sell it when they did, it was probably a lucrative sale at the time.
They still sell games but now it's limited to the US (since this week). Steam is not bad but much more restrictive. Gamersgate lets you keep the install file for most games so you install without being online. Steam had a lot of problems to keep up connections etc lately, so there's a good chance you can't play a game when you want to which is not the case with Impulse where you can play always play offline. In Steam, when you launch it and notice there's connections problems, you can't swith to off-line...then it's too late.
My preferred online service is GOG but they don't have as many new games which is a shame because they are the best.
Are we supposed to be surprised by Impulse's death? Selling Steam keys as soon as they bought the thing? Yep, didn't bother to buy from them ever again. Stayed with GoG as my main, and to a point to Steam for those rare gems (and "Steamworks or bust") like XCOM:EU (I can see the haters twitching... ) or all those Kickstarter alphas/betas (like Wasteland 2).
At least Starock made some nice money finally invested in gaming area, so we may seem some serious gaming benefits out of it, huh?
I understand why SD sold Impulse. It was overhead they did not need at the time, and it was a smart sell, because it allowed them to recover from the disaster of Elemental.
Once Gamestop took over i switched to Steam. The way things were going everything was going through steam anyway. The haters can hate, and there are some things about Steam that still annoy me, but it has improved a lot since those days. At least i can now play steam games offline without going through BS if i want to. Plus steam is not the Boogeyman the haters make it out to be. Steam hasn't done me any wrong yet, and as long as it stays that way i'm fine with it.
I refuse to use Origin. EA... enough said.
What i liked about Impulse while it was under SD's control was that it was an easy, DRM, and BS free way to get games. Plus it had a very low system footprint. It had a lot of potential, but GS did nothing with it. Gamestop's focus is on console gaming anyway. So their purchase of impulse made absolutely no sense at all. I am surprised it lasted as long as it did.
This news made me sad too. I chose to leave GameStop last year after a lot of the decisions you're just now learning about (no more client, US-only sales, steam codes via email etc.) were finalized. I remember being in the first planning meeting for what "the next version of Stardock Central" would be. I remember launching the first THQ game, the first EA game, the first Ubisoft game on Impulse.
I still think we had something that could have been a real competitor if we'd been given the resources we really needed. Impulse::Reactor with some TLC could have been rebuilt into something a lot of developers looking for alternatives could have used. There was also a lot of stuff we had sketched out that we could have done, but was considered too far outside of GameStop's core audience to get approval.
Impulse almost made it to it's 6th birthday (if I remember right, it launched in beta form around May 2008).
I marked the occasion in a tulip garden, in the Netherlands, drinking a Belgian beer
You can switch to offline in Steam even if you don't have a connection. You don't need to be online to switch to offline mode. I've had to do this several times due to my ISP. It will generally try and go online, but after that, you can just switch to offline and go (unless there are games where the developers have specifically set it up to require an internet connection, but thats a developer thing, not a steam thing).
Ok...good to know...have to see how this works.
Cheers
Hope you and the other Impulse guys/gals are all doing OK, Zoomba.
Thanks For the most part, we're doing well. Of the Impulse team, most of us went on to bigger and better things over the last 12 or so months. A few moved into other positions within GameStop, but those who moved out of the company went on to some pretty interesting stuff.
A few of the companies Impulse alums went to:
Good to know!
Initially, i was not that negative about Gamestop and the people complaining about it but i was wrong. Brad should have found another buyer.
It's a shame because i really liked it. Maybe Stardock should give us steam/gamersgate etc keys to the Stardock games we bought on Impulse.
Yes you don't need to be online to play your steam games generally, for me steam works well and made it a lot easier to reinstall my games when I bought a new PC, steam workshop is also a great way to distribute mod's I hope GC3 supports it.
I joined TotalGamingNetwork/StardockCentral to buy GalCivII and subsequently other games. Then Stardock sold Impulse to Gamestop and it went down hill all the way.
Worst of all, as of today, I can't login to my account using the GameStop App, the so call redemption link at http://impulsestore.gamestop.com/redemption/Redeem.aspx gave a connection timeout and I have zero access to all my games. Multiple emails to Gamestop did not help and thus I am stuck.
Any other forumers having difficulty with the Gamestop app?
To be honest haven't tried for a while, probably about 3 months. Will try next change I get really only login to play GC2.
I tried to reinstall Elemental (from disc) and update it with the Gamestop app. My login fails, and I get "Try again in a few hours". Uh... ok.
I tried to download and install the game from Stardock but then the game won't launch for some reason. Guess my nostalgia trip won't happen. I'll just stick with FE:LH on Steam.
And this sums up nicely another reason why I won't touch steam.
Impulse should have received the permission from every customer they service before selling to Gamestop. What if there are customers that refuse to do business with Gamestop.....and they were choosing Impulse because of that....now they lose all their money spent. (yes, I know that's unrealistic....but that's how unrealistic the DRM model is....and it's so stupid as to how people are being suckered into that business model)
To the OP: Impulse wasn't an alternative because it was just as restrictive as the other DRM options. It's perhaps blunt of me to say, but live with the consequences of your decision. (and don't shoot the messenger)
Better to be DRM free.
...and yes I have LH on steam. It's the only game. And only because I bought the game BEFORE they moved it to steam. And I've had nothing but problems and frustrations with steam. Growl.
the impression I got was that Gamestop vastly offered more for Impulse than any other buyer- Brad was going to sell period at that point, and he didn't know how bad Gamestop was.
ask stardock support for help? i would imagine you could update the game with stardock's updating program.. stardock central?
GFireflyE, I think you are going to have to get to downloading software including games from digital distributers be that steam or another physical media is on the way out for software delivery. Though personally I don't care if you use steam or not obviously.
It was just something I was doing on... wait for it... impulse! I already spent more time messing with it than the game/nostalgia is worth. But yeah, if the mood ever strikes again I'll bug them.
Just an update to my problem pertaining to accessing the game library at GameStop.
Seems that GameStop does not allow access from Malaysia, but I was able to access using Firefox + Hola using US proxy .
After setting up the Hola US VPN, I can login using the GameStop client.
So I guess is confirmed that GameStop has zero intention/consideration for international customers.
My lesson : DRM model is bad. Better stick with GOG.
Brad has never struck me as idiotic or incompetent, and he would have to be both to not realize how bad Gamestop (and it's affiliated companies) was. Their reputation as ruthlessly (often unethically) and narrow-mindedly exploitative of both staff, developers, and customers is well known, and has been for years. That's exactly why many Impulse users were shocked by the news.
I did try to use Impulse under GameStop control, but I came to not like it. I gave GameStop a chance and they disappointed me. I especially didn't like how their pre-orders didn't show all the information I felt I needed to know before making a purchase, namely the types of DRM used. I quickly stopped pre-ordering games I thought looked interesting because of that. It seemed to become all about the pre-order bonus goodies and the surprise DRM... then came the Steam keys. They stopped trying to sell and distribute the games themselves, so I stopped bothering with them after that.Under Stardock control, I was confident that the all the games were either all DRM free, or had DRM carefully crafted to minimize the inconvenience to the user (such as GOO). I did try to support the Stardock middle ground, because it looked good enough and that it would last. Now it seems it that Impulse is going the way of the dinosaur. A shame, as I did buy many games during Impulse buys sales, but I need Impulse to download and install all those games.Another reason to support GOG.com I suppose. I know the games and files I download through them will survive so long as my hard drives do.
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