14 DAY TRIAL // Just as Valve announced its plans to introduce changes in its Steamworks service in order to make piracy impossible and eliminate Digital Rights Management from Steam-distributed games, Stardock revealed a series of changes coming to Impulse, its own digital distribution service. The company says that they are designed to eliminate some of the more usual problems that the concept has.
The new technology, called Game Object Obfuscation, and abbreviated as GOO, is set to allow all developers to create a package containing a game executable and Stardock's own Impulse Reactor. The package should be encrypted, making pirating a game distributed through Impulse impossible. Also, the game is associated, when first launched, with an e-mail address and a password and not to a particular hardware setup. The activation is only done once, and a connection to the Internet will not be required to play the game.
One of the biggest advantages of GOO is that it opens the door to the re-selling of digitally distributed games. It is simply a matter of disabling access to one game for one user and enabling it for another. The solution also presents advantages in that there is no third-party software installed on the player's computer and it allows one game to be authenticated using different digital distribution services.
Brad Wardell, who is the president and CEO of Stardock, stated that "Publishers want to be able to sell their games in as many channels as possible but don't want to have to implement a half-dozen 'copy protection' schemes. Game Object Obfuscation lets the developer have a single game build that can be distributed everywhere while letting gamers potentially be able to re-download their game later from any digital service. Plus, it finally makes possible a way for gamers and publishers to transfer game licenses to players in a secure and reliable fashion."
GOO will make its debut on April 7, as part of an Impulse update, and several publishers are already said to be interested in the service.