Stardock Corporation, the dudes who own digital distribution service (DDS) Impulse have announced they've reached just about one million users since launching last summer. As such, they'd like to celebrate and promote this achievement by awarding the millionth customer a top of the line gaming rig worth over $4,000.
According to Impulse, achieving one million users is about as simple as creating a customer-friendly experience, aggressively pricing their items (rarrgh, $29.99!), and supporting local currency conversion.
"We're very pleased with how quickly Impulse is growing," said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. "The digital distribution market is still in its infancy, ensuring that publishers and consumers both have choices this early on ensures that this market will continue to be dynamic and competitive."
Stardock will be at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) next week, talking with publishers and preparing to unveil Impulse Reactor, a "library that allows publishers to provide effective protection for their software, in-game chat, 'friends' lists and micro-expansion purchasing". By the sounds of it, this is the "non-intrusive" Digital Rights Management (DRM) model they said they were going to develop last year. Unlike other methods, Reactor doesn't require publishers to change any code in their software or include any third-party client with their game, allowing them to have a single executable file sold at retail or via a DDS that is "vendor neutral". It will be releasing next month.
Wardell continued, "A big part of our upcoming focus with Impulse is to work with publishers to ensure that they don't lock themselves and their customers into a particular vendor. That means providing technical alternatives to publishers they can count on and the best possible user experience for our users."
The final bit of news is the upcoming third major update to Impulse, which will further lessen the DRM on the service with "Impulse Anywhere", which will allow customers to download their games on one computer and install it on their home computer; many tweaks and changes are in store, as well.
"By Impulse's first birthday, we expect Impulse to be the 2nd largest digital distributor of PC games and to have nearly all of the major PC game publishers on board," said Wardell.
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