14 DAY TRIAL // Stardock is announcing that its digital distribution service, Impulse, has finally received the Phase 3 update, which introduces a number of new features: Impulse Anywhere, allowing games to be downloaded on any machine and played on another one, Impulse Reactor, which permits developers to include matchmaking, friends lists and rankings, Impulse Reactor Overlay and GOO, a.k.a Game Object Obfuscation.
Brad Wardell, who is the chief executive officer of Stardock, is saying that the functionality he hoped to built into Impulse is now pretty much all there and that the next focus of his company lies in “bringing the catalog of games and applications on Impulse up to parity with what is available on other services.” This, obviously, refers to having as many games as Steam is currently offering, which is quite a big undertaking considering that the Valve delivery service is loaded with titles from the likes of Electronic Arts.
The biggest change is the addition of GOO, which will basically allow a publisher to make sure that it offers players a better product. With GOO, the executable of a video-game is encrypted and is paired with a key, which is tied to an account and a password. This means that piracy is pretty much eliminated, which is very important on the PC, but also that a player can sell the game they get to another one, simply by tying the title to another account and different password.
Wardell tells that, “Right now, if I pay $50 for a PC game and play it for a few weeks, I'm out $50. As a result of that, people don't tend to buy as many PC games, because they have to be really, really sure they're going to like it. On a console, you don't have nearly that issue because you can trade games back and forth with your friends.”
With Steam not allowing the re-sale of titles bought through it, Impulse could really enjoy a wide following, especially if big video-game publishers sign up to the GOO concept.