I was thinking they'd be more into Xbox 360 stuff, since that is their primary income generator.  And some of that could be offset with tournament buy-ins, say $10 or $15 per person.  By rotating the games utilized you drive sales for all those in the leagues, and potentially their desires to trade the games in when the league is done with that particular title.  Also, this would be layered on top of their usual sales tactics.  The reason you don't see too many Internet cafes in the West is that personal computers and consoles are quite popular.  In Asian countries they utilize their cell phones more, and other portable devices.  So there is makes sense to pay for time at a cafe and not have the computer laying around the home.

At the rate they're locking threads today, I kind of wonder if anything with a pony in it will be locked next.

Mmm, mostly they've been trying to keep the discussion centralized in one or two threads.  We did, however, learn that Brad doesn't know what "melodrama" means.

They wouldn't be distracted for very long. Yes expansion takes some considerably expertise but with the right people it can easily be done and by doing so they'd be keeping profits to themselves. How big is the team that handles Impulse anyway? Not that large so I fail to see how it would be terribly difficult to slowly increase it's man power over time. I just cannot understand why someone would throw something successful away for any reason.

I'm just not sure what all this means just yet.  I'm not ready to freak out.  I'm not saying that at some point I won't make a crazy rant in regard to Gamestop, but I like to wait until they start making changes.  Maybe this could be a good thing?  I know that it's generally a waste of time to go to a Gamestop if I want a PC game, they have one rack and it's filled with WoW expansions.  And I don't blame Brad for selling it.  Shit, if he doesn't want to spend all his time and resources being a retailer, then he should sell impulse.  He has every right.  I do worry that Gamestop isn't a company I trust, like I trust Stardock.  But, still going to wait and see before I nerd-rage.

Call me crazy but I think this implies that Gamestop wants back into the PC market.  The trend is to Digital Downloads anyway, and those are not something Gamestop in its current form can profit from... until now.  Since I serioulsy doubt Microsoft or Sony would allow an online Gamestop/Impule store for consols (drool) the one place for them is PC games

They have seen the writing on the wall, someone at that company knows that the current brick and mortar model won't last forever.

Since it is not exactly that extreme, likely not. It mostly just serves to show just how much of the Impulse user base GameStop will have to win over if they want the continued business from those people.

And it would be kind of hard to lock ALL the threads.

The star ruler devs have pulled their game from Impulse due to Gamestop's new ownership.

Well I hope you got a sweet deal out of this Brad.

I'm not happy with Gamestop taking over my account management because of past experiences but maybe it will work out.

I know that I won't be buying anything else off of Impulse for a while.  I'm going to wait and see what kind of changes take place first.

I was quite saddened.  I really do like Impulse as a platform and its staff as we knew them were great.  Yet, that is not enough I'm afraid.

[Also I'm not a CEO.  We're a 3-man LLC and not a corporation.   We're basically all 'co-lead developers' with my boss owning the whole company.]

To be clear:  The game will not be pulled just yet.  It will not be pulled until the 'keys change hands' so to speak.  That should be sometime in May.  (All current users will still be able to update their game and et cetera.  By Pulling I mean 'it will no longer be offered for sale'.  I do not mean to imply that Star Ruler will vanish from Impulse for our current customers.  We fully intend to support all Impulse customers to the greatest extents possible; up to and including an in-game updater solution so that you don't lose the convenience of automatic updates for our title.  It won't be as slick as Impulse of course.  No running in the background and silently updating stuff.  But it will at least prevent you from having to go through the hassle of patch after patch, seeing what patch patches what and so on.)

Well, my posting history in the other thread will show that I'm not one of the doom and gloom people on this... but locking a lot of threads sends the wrong message. There are upset Stardock fans out there. It's better to let them vent and get it out of their systems so to speak, then engage in a disucssion once they calm down some. Locking threads and telling people to go away and stop being melodramatic isn't going to help.

Anything people are emotionally attached to (and Stardock gets that reaction from people) will face this kind of a response to change.