Gamestop acquires Impulse

[Azazel]

Or if you want to play games that are older than a year - there's actually a decent markdown on older used console games.

Even on those, the markdown is much more significant buying from the UK rather than locally.

[Kageru]

The steam mark-down on old games can be pretty good too.

It's also because Australian retail rent is insane. Something I only found out when retailers were trying to explain the costs. A shopping centre store in the Australian suburbs has the same sort of rent as a store in New York or London apparently, with a much smaller number of customers. Tie that in with an exclusive distributor and everyone taking a nice big cut. That's still their problem though, if the costs are so high they should have been adapting online selling and parallel importing ages ago but they didn't really need to compete with anyone.

Of course the distributor pushes the retailer to make steam match retail price on some of the big name games (which is part of the reason I didn't buy Fallout or Borderlands). But that should end once retail is marginalised.

[UnSub]

A shopping centre store in the Australian suburbs has the same sort of rent as a store in New York or London apparently, with a much smaller number of customers.

On top of which the landlord has it in the contract that they get to see the retailer's accounting books before any rent review.

[koro]

And in news about Gamestop buying Impulse (remember that?), some indie devs are dropping Impulse due to it.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/gamestop-purchase-pushing-away-impulse-developers/

“Due to a rather large list of things we detest about GameStop, Star Ruler will no longer be available for purchase on Impulse after the takeover,” a post on the developer’s official forums explained. “We are ending sales through Impulse due to GameStop's long, negative behavior toward the PC platform and independent games. We would never have signed onto distribution through GameStop, and being forced into this situation has only made it worse for us. We feel GameStop cannot serve as the leader of a true competitor in the digital distribution market.”

The developers hammered at GameStop’s business practices in the post, including a consistent focus on “large budget titles and safe bets” and a lack of support for “the independent market”. They also lament the fact that Impulse will no longer be under the direction of Stardock’s Brad Wardell.

How much of Impulse's lineup consists of indie devs again?

[HaemishM]

I thought it was all indie devs, or at least a sizeable portion of it.

[Sky]

I didn't know Gamestop still sold pc games. Why would anyone bother with that place? Steam, GOG, maybe Amazon for the rare non-Steam release.

I think I have a couple Impulse sale buys, but I wouldn't know because I just check my Steam library when looking for things to play.

[Kail]

I didn't know Gamestop still sold pc games. Why would anyone bother with that place? Steam, GOG, maybe Amazon for the rare non-Steam release.

I went by there the other day to check, and (I am seriously not kidding here) they had a shelf labelled "Blizzard" with a bunch of Blizzard titles on it, another similar setup for Call of Duty.  And that was it, as far as I could see.

Which makes it kind of puzzling why they decided to grab Impulse in the first place, but whatever.

[Azazel]

Buying the infrastructure that's already in place, as I am sure they also heard how much $$ Steam made last year.

Now they can sell you Call of Duty online as well.

[sinij]

More like re-sell the same copy of Call of Duty to everyone. They will justify it by calling it "future used" copies.

I don't blame indie devs bailing on Impulse, there is no reason to wait for the other shoe to drop - we know how it will turn out.

[Azazel]

The thing that pisses me off the most about Steam is actually the Trio of Team Fortress 2/Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 - TF2 being by far the worst of them.

What's the deal with all of the constant fucking huge patches on these titles? TF2 seems to have a 500mb-1gb patch every week or two at the most. I know they have an endless stream of stupid hats in the game now, but I can't see how or why that takes such huge patches to add in.

[Ingmar]

The patches I get have been a lot smaller than that, from what I've noticed. Something is corrupt somewhere and causing you to need to redownload stuff I would guess from a quick peek at their forums.

[Hawkbit]

I wonder if they'll untie Sins of a Solar empire from Impulse, so I can go back to playing it. 

[Murgos]

I'm getting ready to stick impulse into my spam filter.  I've gotten something from them every day this week.

[Sky]

I wonder if they'll untie Sins of a Solar empire from Impulse, so I can go back to playing it. 

That's really the win for gamers, imo. If Stardock will finally put their games on Steam, I might actually get around to playing one. Haven't since GalCiv 1.

[Mrbloodworth]

The thing that pisses me off the most about Steam is actually the Trio of Team Fortress 2/Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 - TF2 being by far the worst of them.

What's the deal with all of the constant fucking huge patches on these titles? TF2 seems to have a 500mb-1gb patch every week or two at the most. I know they have an endless stream of stupid hats in the game now, but I can't see how or why that takes such huge patches to add in.

I believe this is indicative of source based game, updating even a small thing on the map will require the entire thing to be downloaded again.

[koro]

I wonder if they'll untie Sins of a Solar empire from Impulse, so I can go back to playing it. 

That's really the win for gamers, imo. If Stardock will finally put their games on Steam, I might actually get around to playing one. Haven't since GalCiv 1.

Considering the smack Brad Wardell's been talking about Steam this past week, the chances of that happening are still hovering around nil.