I think stardock should take this to game developers/publishers and ask what they think of this then give the replays to every gaming mag/website.

edit: what the... *delets a load of rubbish code looking stuff that appeared from no where*

If a game developer wants to spend the time and effort to keep an old game running, they're certainly free to do so. But they certainly have no obligation to do so. The obligation is on the player; if they want to keep playing the game, then they need to keep a Win95/98 or whatever box available. And if they can't? Tough.

Then they should have called it "Promizes StarDock intends to keep" or "The StarDock Philosophy on Game Development." Calling it "The Gamer's Bill of Rights" is very pretensious; it's basically saying that all game developers should adhere to these rules.

If it's just for StarDock, then it should mention that. If they're going to make a bunch of rules that everyone else should follow, they shouldn't be self-serving.

Quoted for the absolute purest truth.

It really amazes me the time and effort spent in putting together a feature like "multiple tech trees" in ToA that could have been put into really polishing the actual game.

It's one thing to talk about keeping a game running for a reasonable period of time. That is, providing patches for "bad" drivers and the like. It's quite something else to say that developers ought to release games with balance issues, playability problems, and "a year earlier than they should have."

Now yes, developers can and have done this. StarCraft is probably the best example: it became the national sport of South Korea precisely because of Blizzard's willingness to make sure it is balanced. But no developers should have to if they don't want to. It should not be a moral imperative that they do so.

Furthermore, we should not encourage developers to make half-finished games and then finish them after we purchased them.

Sounds like just a pubicity stunt, if a company really believes this then they don't need to state it.

Though I have to admit it, this has gotten stardock alot of publicity, several forums I visit have threads on this, so I guess it was a success.

Also:

8: Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

Isn't making people use Impulse to update there games kinda treating them like potential criminals?

I don't buy that. I mean, I buy the part about it being a publicity stunt, but not your reasoning for it.

A company should be free to make a declaration of principles (Google's "Do No Evil" and such). It may be a publicity stunt, but it's still valuable information. And even moreso when you can hold them accountable when they don't measure up.

What makes this a meaningless stunt is that it isn't a declaration of SD's principles. It's just SD saying, "StarDock's ideas about game development are right and everyone else's are wrong." It isn't just a publicity stunt; it's pompus and arrogant.

No. Impulse is small, free, lightweight, and actually quite convenient if you own a lot of Impulse-based software.

No it isn't. A finished game does not mean that it can't have meaningful updates. An example would be TF2. Completely finished and playable. Only some balance tweaks needed to be done and some bugs/glitches needed to be squashed, but it was very finished. Valve has consistantly released meaningful updates to the game by introducing new maps, new weapons, new achievements, new game types, etc. So far, they have released 3 new sets of weapons (3 for 3 classes for a total of 9 weapons), about 8 to 9 new maps, and two new game modes on top of squashing all of the bugs that the updates bring, balancing everything, and making everything much better over all.

You can release a finished and complete product while still adding meaningful updates. Complete /=/ can not have anything else included.

How? If you bought the product, you can download the update just fine. Treating your customer like a criminal would be limiting the number of installs a game has a-la EA or forcing you to check in with a server to play single player (or sticking your disk in your drive when you don't have an internet connection.

Stopping pirates from getting an update /=/ letting everyone download an update.

Unfortunatly it won't stop pirates anyways. =/

Should they really stop developing new features because there are bugs? They are not a single person: They have multiple developers. They are perfectly capable of having some people hunt the bogs while others add new features to the game. Would you have them shut down the entire development process every time a bug is found?

I'm sure if you are playing at a decent difficulty level, they are developing planets and building ships. I'd say they are simply not doing it in a manner you think is optimal. If you have some ideas to give to them, I'm sure they'd be willing to listen.

Yes, all you have to do is install SDC and register the games with your account when you initially installed them (assuming you bought a boxed version to start, which I did). I understand that now. But read #4 "Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game." Maybe they mean you shouldn't need it EVERY time you want to play, but it is acceptable for initial installs...but it seems iffy to me. It also isn't clear that you need to do that, and you could end up in a situation, like I was, where that didn't happen, and you're left without the ability to play a game, entirely because of anti-piracy DRM. 

I'd like to note as an aside that the reason I didn't register, beyond it being somewhat confusing, is it was optional to play the game to start out (just not optional if I wanted to play the expansion, later on.) This is good in a way, it makes sure DRM doesn't get in the way of playing the game and fits in really well with their goals. But it doesn't prevent the problem I had later on with the expansion, so they really need a clearer easier to use system that makes it clear why you would need to register. I don't know what Impulse is, but maybe that is the answer to my concerns. 

So in summary, yes, if you use their system as you're supposed to, it works. That is the same with any DRM system, the question is whether this system is good enough that it never denies a valid customer. They don't have that yet, and they're still violating their own rules in a few edge cases. That isn't too bad, they do a good job overall, it was just ironic to me since as I said this was the only time I wasn't able to play a game I've purchased right from the start. Ever. And the point of these rights as I understand them is to make sure you can always play a game you bought. Overall they do a great job though, I acknowledge this case is a rare one that comes about through a series of unusual circumstances.

Well, considering that there are bugs that have been in the game since day 1, and have survived to ToA's releases and patches, and will likely survive through 2.0, it isn't a question of who's doing what. They're simply not fixing many long-standing bugs.

And it isn't just about bugs; it's about polish. Even if the UI were bug-free, it would still be a very weak UI.

GalCiv II is ultimately a mathematical excercise. It is not difficult to write an equation of many variables and derive "opt" for a particular set of variables. Opt being the one optimal build order for a particular set of circumstances. You can even develop some rules of thumb that don't require you to compute "opt".

The fact is this: the computer does not use its planets anywhere near optimally. The game's build system requires specialization of planets to make optimal use of them, but the computer keeps trying to generalize its worlds. It has no idea how to make a high-population world and yoke money from it.

Yeah I take your point, but like I said... they're only putting pressure on themselves. Like that guy from NY that declared  he hated crime but was living large on the flesh trade circuit. He was probably determined not to give in to his lower brain when he made his statements, but then some bug just took over and...nobodies an oracle.

Alphonse...bugs or no bugs...you will have to take multiple tech trees from my cold dead hands. Still, I must admit...I myself put ToA on ice 6 weeks ago, in hope that 2.0 will be solving a couple of "issues." So while I can certainly appreciate the antagonism in this thread, I find it hard to fault a battlecry that has only just been issued. Time will be the judge I guess.

While I'm think of it. Lets do a bit of roleplaying, this is mainly based upon my own experiances. Lets pretend I have just bought Galciv2:DL On CD only and have installed it, it is 1.0 and I have no experiance with stardock.

*Installs game plays a bit and quite*

"Hmm, fun game, few bugs though, better go get a patch."

*Goes to the Galciv2 website and looks for a patch, finds a link to impulse but no patches*

"Hrrm wonder what this Impulse thing is?, and no patches? Better go check the forums."

*Checks forums and has to fight through the slow loading times of the Gal-civ2 forums to find out I have to use impulse to download patches*

"Well that sucks, I guess I have to download this thing"

*Downloads Impulse and installs, discovers the installation of impulse requires a download as it installs*

"WTF? I wanted to browse the web while it installed, now I have to sit here and download this thing, I JUST EFFING DOWNLOADED IT"

*After it finally installs I click the desktop shortcut, nothing happens at first*

"What, why isn't it loading?," *hits ctrl alt delete* "herrm  its there wonder whats wrong now" *it finally comes up* "FINALLY"

*Logs in, but it requires a long time for it to verify*

"HURRY UP"

*It finally verifies and retrieves latest info, notifies I have to update*

"Hrrm better update it I guess"

*Updates impulse, it takes a bit on my connection and has to be restarted afterward*

"Gods what a pain"

*Finally loads and logs in, I begin updating Gal-civ 2, Nothing happens at first*

"What why isn't it downloading?"

*After a good 10 minutes its finally downloading*

"Why did it take 10 minutes to even start downloading? How slow is this crap, anyways  its big update, mise well go to bed, its already 1 AM and it was 10 PM when I first installed Gal-civ2."

*goes to bed and lets it update*

Thankyou Zoomba, and all of Stardock, Ironclad and Gas Powered Games for the stand that you are making against the big companies on our behalf. On every issue you have always gone above and beyond the call of duty, well past the point that any other company would bail out and simply avoid the issue. You are what all companies should aspire to be, and things like this are the reasons why Stardock has been the only pc game company for pc recieving my money since 2006.

Thankyou.

That's unusual. Did you report the bugs?

Optimal for what? A tech victory? A military victory? Keeping alive while the player takes full advantage of knowing the equation ?

Have you tested this on higher levels of difficulty, btw?

I'd like you to read this first, please...

https://forums.galciv2.com/321204

and then come back here with your exact system specs - so we can all determine if dealing with Impulse (or SDC, btw)  is such a daunting exercise.

Yeah... should I add in that to my post?

*Deciding that impulse is taking too long to load I check the forums for help, after dealing with the lag fest that is the Galciv forums I finally manage to speed up impulse a little, I decide that it would of been faster just to not deal with it.*