GameStop Finishes Integrating Impulse Digital Download Service

Large North American retailer GameStop has finished integrating its digital distribution business segment into the recently acquired Impulse service.

The digital games distribution market was shaken up a few months ago when large "brick and mortar" retailer GameStop announced that it has purchased the Impulse service from games developer and publisher Stardock.

While Impulse was no match for the current digital distribution king, Valve's Steam, it managed to attract through plenty of deals, just like Direct2Drive, which was also recently acquired by GameFly, and had quite a lot of fans.

Now, the company has announced that it has finished integrating the Impulse service into its digital distribution segment, so customers that buy PC games from the GameStop.com website are now required to download the Impulse client first before getting the actual games.

"A key highlight for GameStop Impulse customers will be ease of use that will allow them to purchase, download, install, update and manage their digital purchases," said GameStop general manager of digital distribution Steve Nix. "We intend to offer the best experience, content and value for PC gamers everywhere and this is only the beginning."

Through this integration, Impulse now has over 1,200 games in its library, which, after being purchased, either straight from the service, from the GameStop website or the actual stores, can be tied to the account of the owner, and re-downloaded as many times as he or she wants.

Impulse is also hosting a special promotion in the next two weeks, called Download Days, which see the prices slashed on hundreds of popular PC titles by up to 75 percent.

Now, with the full integration, expect GameStop to run even more interesting offers on Impulse in order to raise awareness for the service and grow its user count, thus establishing its presence in the digital distribution market, not just in the brick and mortar retail one.