In that respect, Impulse will deliver products to a different market and will distinguish itself enough from Steam to attract customers. Featuring the same suite of automatic updates and digitally distributed add-ons, Impulse will be the first in a line of competitors for the Steam platform vying for your custom.
The other player in the market is IGN; with their Direct2Drive platform, they have established a viable alternative to Steam already, with a wide selection of games available and a roughly similar system in operation. It also offers TV shows, movies and a variety of other media for purchase and download. Like Impulse, it is distinguishing itself from other platforms by offering this other range of services. In this way, each of these platforms is becoming its own individually identifiable store, with its own product range and own design and layout. Does that then make Steam the Wal-mart of the on-line world? Perhaps so. But which features of these services will attract customers?
The Digital Mall
With these competitors then all offering a similar experience to the end user, the marketplace should redefine itself to be an online high-street, with each ’store’ competing for subscribers and users. The relative dominance of Steam has meant most of its new releases are much more expensive than some of the better deals possible from brick and mortar establishments, or even others online. With strong competition from Stardock, which is jumping into the market with an already well established system and user-base, this can only mean more benefits to the consumer.
Stardock’s well known commitment to rewarding the consumer is reflected in Impulse, and currently employed in TotalGaming. Like Valve, they publish their own developed games. The most recent of which is Sins of a Solar Empire, produced by Ironclad Games, and a multitude of Galactic Civilizations 2 expansion packs – one of Stardock’s better known and critically acclaimed franchises.
This provides a foundation upon which they can grow their customer base. Like Valve, they will use their own digital vendor to sell their own games, meaning at the very least, their fans and customers will be quick to uptake on their service.
Their commitment to DRM-free gaming is also a huge draw for many PC gamers plagued with the increasingly desperate and convoluted piracy prevention measures implemented into games. Measures which end up punishing the legitimate consumer, rather than penalising the pirates, who will invariably crack the protection in just as little time as it takes to upload the game to torrent networks.
Why buy when you can steal?
Digital distribution aims to reduce piracy in several ways, and whatever your feelings on the issue, it is a very real and pressing concern for publishers. Online activation of the product is built into the purchasing process, and invisible content updates are also commonplace, rewarding the legitimate consumer. You won’t get a three-hundred page manual or cloth maps, or little plastic figurines, mouse mats, or any of the other cheap and tacky crap that comes with special editions, through the Internet, but you will get additions to the game, patches and updates. It was not too long ago that bug fixes and content patches were a fanciful dream rather than an accepted reality.
Steam employs an offline mode which allows for the games to be taken away from the Internet, and while it does allow the installation on multiple systems with no limitations, the only draw is that no Steam account can be online from two separate places. This gives freedom to the consumer to use their purchased product freely and without invasive protection, while also putting reasonable constraints of the user distribution of the product.
Impulse claims to be much more open, in keeping with Stardock’s continuing policy of being DRM-free and rewarding the legitimate customer. Recent furores over invasive and overly protective piracy prevention tools has divided the industry, with some favoring the maximum effort possible to stop piracy, while the rest advocating a free system which does not punish the consumer. Stardock, being at the forefront of this movement, consistently promise to never restrict their customers in the name of reducing piracy. By distributing their games online via the same methods as those who steal games, Stardock is banking on the loyalty of their customers and the attractiveness of their product to survive. So far, it is working.
Online distribution is therefore effectively ‘official piracy.’ By using the same methods to sell the product as those that are used to steal it, the temptation to put draconian and massively overprotective digital rights on these products is thankfully not taking hold over Valve and Stardock. Torrenting is synonymous with illegal activities, but is a viable and well established method for distributing content, now employed legitimately by many companies to patch games or provide expansion material. Along with D2D and a smaller selection of less profitable services, online distribution for media is quickly becoming not just an alternative to high-street boxed copies, but a very real and tangible primary source for game purchasing.
