Wait now I would be forced to use both Steam and Impulse?

When buying a Steamworks game on Impulse? I assume you can just put the key in steam and stick to Steam only xD

Finally.

actually the steam shop and the steam client are also different pair of shoes.

I want to buy stardock games via d2d usable with the steam client! :)

Pay D2D blue coins for a Stardock game with Steam achievements, and download it through EADM or GOG.

Except Impulse isn't Stardock anymore...

the big problem with steam is that it's client is first and foremost a marketing tool for for Valve's storefront. 99% of what steam actually does could be done without without constantly pushing it's users into browsing Steams catalog, hell most of it could be done without a visible client at all.

think from a normal retail perspective, how comfortable would you be selling a product that required the customer to walk into a compositor's store in order to use it?

just to make this example simple, I'll stick to video games: if the only place you could get 360 games was from Walmart, how comfortable do you think best buy would be with selling Xbox 360's?

sure, best buy would get a little bit of money for the console sale, but by selling that console they have just guaranteed the customer is going to go give money to a rival. not just money for the games, but also for most every other incidental sale on an item that they could have gotten from Best Buy, but since they are already at walmart ....

I despise having Steam's shitty little client rubber necking over my shoulder, but the real reason I don't buy from them is because of how much they are trying to downward spiral everyone into exclusively playing PC games on steam.

(aka monopolize the market)

It's a few clicks to have the client open to the library and not the store and to disable the popups talking about new games.

If wanted you can use the client solely as a game library with no sales 'necking over your shoulder'.

All it does is make people aware the 'shop' exists, because they have to walk the first time to get to their game.

(Firstly, most of your complaints can be solved by fiddling with the defaults in the Preferences. Specifically, the Favourite Page and the Advertising check box.)

Secondly, the fact that Gamersgate and Direct2drive is continuing to sell Steamworks games (and has done so for several months), means that I don't think your fear is nowhere near realised.

I would guess it's mostly because they don't really have any choice on the mater, when a sizable percentage of new games uses Steamwork exclusively its not like they can decide to just ignore them. But I am pretty sure it must piss them off immensely, sell games that forces your customers to install your biggest rival client software; client complete with shop integration and advertisement popups... If Microsoft was only thinking of doing a tenth of what Steam is doing they would be sued to death in next millisecond... Valve only manage to get away with it because hey are not yet big enough for a anti-trust lawsuit but I wonder how long it will last.

*shrug* About as long as it takes for people stop riding Valves cock.

eventually people will start to realize that except for Half life all of Valve's other titles have been derivatives of popular mods / bandwagoning on popular trends.

TF2 started out as a mod.
Portal was a student project / mod.
Left For Dead was the brain child of a developer that Valve acquired.
and now DOTA 2 which needs no introduction.

now that's a track record of innovation at it's finest ...

http://impulsedriven.com/brink

It's region restricted . :(

Good to see GameStop continuing the fine traditions of Impulse.

http://impulsedriven.com/pgbrink

laugh with me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaxLmoHI8SY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca9GuwuOVZc