Draginol

And that is probably the first indication that Gamestop is going to get eaten by Valve...

I've felt sad about it and slightly betrayed ever since you sold impulse...

This must be gamestops plan to stay competitive 

Cause nothing says competitive like forcing your users to use a competing service.

(Just ask D2D how that worked.. oh wait.. gamefly bought them out nevermind.)

Shh logic might confuse the suits.

Step 1 Get into digital distribution.

Step 2 Sell steam works games

Step 3 Since you just can't figure out why your users  are migrating to steam. Sell your digital distribution unit for double what its worth to another company.

Step 4 Profit

How can you argue with that ironclad business plan?

Ya they started very shortly after being acquired by gamestop. A week or 2 IIRC. That was the point I knew gamestop was a joke. They don't compete  with anyone else on sales pricing, and they have really nothing to offer you can't get from another service. Plus for certain purchases your required to use other services anyway.

If anyone can tell me wtf gamestops management is thinking for impulse I'd be glad to hear it, but short of puffing it up to sell it off I can't come up with a viable long term plan that matches their moves with it so far.

It seems DD users are gonna be passed around like a cheap... well you know passed around alot. My D2D account has now been migrated to gamefly. So now I have to download a GD gamefly client to play my D2D games I bought years ago

Oh I guarantee thats what it is. Gamestop has to answer to its shareholders. Short term profits are the name of the game. In the long term though once the DD unit isn't profiting. It'll be scrapped or sold. Steams growth is partly due to the fact that they DO have steamworks. Heck.. how many people bought Civ V and were forced to use steam for the first time? Every new steamworks game brings steam more users.. no matter where that game is sold from.

 If another DD service cannot give people a reason to buy from them, then once a customer is locked into a steam account you already lost them as a customer. (EA understands this.. which is why all new EA games will be linked to origin.. creating the same situation for EA with its own games)

GOG has DRM free..(and most of their games are older.. GOG is a niche player but they pretty much have the niche locked down)

Gamers gate has blue tokens and does some nice sales.(but since even paradox is abandoning it for steamworks its probably on a downward spiral)

Gamefly will let you play all of their PC games for a monthly fee. (interesting business model and depending on the price might actually be cheaper for some gaming addicts)

gamestop has....??????, no seriously wtf do they have?

Maybe some users would rather Impulse get some of the moneys than Valve gets all of it?  It's certainly an inelegant solution buying Steamworks games from Impulse, but it's up to the user.  And sales aren't at the same time on both services.

I've bought Steamworks games on sale on Impulse.  And instead of downloading them from Impulse I put the key into Steam and downloaded it from there and profited.

Impulse also sells games that require Origin, if you hadn't noticed!  As does pretty much everyone but Steam.

If people are opposed to supporting steam and/or valve why would they buy a steamworks game? Yes, valve won't see the money from your purchase... but the publisher who made the game is indirectly supporting valve by requiring you to use their service.

Do they simply lack the courage of their convictions?

Sure as I said in the above post.. if you offer a steamworks game cheaper than steam you might get some sales from that, but gamestops sales have been a joke when you compare it to sales prices on other sites. And if you do make it very cheap.. your only likely to increase the number of steam users.

Honestly you can't win in the long term when your selling subscriptions to a competing service. Short term they will do fine, long term there will be less and less reasons for people to bother using their service over steam.

As for origin.. yes as i Stated in my earlier post, of course origin is selling through other DDs, because just like steam.. it brings them more users to their origin service. They are hoping to do like steam and leech users in the long term.

Um.. they require you to install steam so.. if people refuse to install steam it doesn't change anything. (I am one of those people who refuse to install steam or origin. I know resistance is futile but I refuse to be assimilated. )

heh... that's a bit funny then.    Someday I hope to download something from direct-to-drive that requires me to install steam and impulse.  Finally, a win for everyone.

I'm only on the boat if i have to use a specific service to get a game I want.  Otherwise, I just default to steam.  And the only reason for that is how they excel at sales over the competition.  Anyway, if I could only have one service, I'd personally just go with steam for that reason. 

CURSES!!!!

I miss the days when you could just install the software you want and have it bundled with whatever garbage the publisher wanted to throw at you... oh... wait... did they come up with a way to make you need that other software? 

Screw it. I'm leaving impulse and I'm going to steam. A friend told me I might be able migrate some of my games over by getting the serial keys from impulse and giving them to steam.

Why are you against new content delivery system?