DRM News

At GDC 2010, Stardock unveiled Impulse::Reactor (yes, the twin colon in there is supposed to be), their company’s answer to Valve’s Steamworks suite. The press release has been posted on the company’s website for anyone to take a look at.

The highlights of the new system include :

-Automated setup for developers.

-Vendor neutrality. While Steamworks ties an application to Steam itself, Reactor won’t rely on any external client. Also, any user can log in to the system using an existing Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live or OpenID account.

-Stardock is using many of their own apps (WindowBlinds, DirectSkin, etc.) to help with integration, which they claim will make things easier to re-skin or customize for developers.

-No added charge. The lone requirement for any publisher wishing to use it is that the game has to be available on Impulse (though not exclusively on Impulse).

While Stardock’s previous DRM system, GOO, saw moderate success (Red Faction : Guerrilla, Majesty 2 and East India Company used it for every version of the game aside from the Steam versions), it was mostly used for Impulse versions of titles that used other systems on other retailers. It also seemed to be quickly forgotten and passed by. Stardock’s lack of follow-up, or even any real attempt to bring attention to releases that were using GOO as their primary form of DRM, was strange when one looks at how much hype they had previously built up around the system at last year’s GDC.

We’ll see if this suffers the same fate, or if it takes off. Certainly, if it comes out as advertised it seems to have advantages for gamers. Will developers and publishers see things the same way and sign on?

The other issue with Stardock has been the regional sales restrictions put on their games by publishers. Unless those same publishers are willing to expand the areas Stardock is permitted to sell their games, Impulse::Reactor isn’t going to benefit too many people outside of the North American market.