Stardock Annual Report 2009

Overheal

PDF

One of the big areas of discussion for Stardock this year has been its response to Valve and Steamworks DRM; Weekend Specials (and more recently, Valve's counter response to Weekend Impulse Buys with Steam Midweek Madness :rolleyes: not that im complaining, its just amusing) and that botched launch of the otherwise successful Demigod. True to their word, they followed the Bill of Rights in that case and Refunded any user unhappy with the failings in network support - but reportedly, 90% of the users lost re-purchased the game after the issues had been resolved. You wouldnt see the same of Valve atm with L4D2 launch concerns - Im talking about people reportedly getting crashed to desktop and such.

Though they also talk about the Object Desktop for a while - but thats a good read, and makes me want to buy it.

Most importantly, its written by a person, like a person.

I like impulse, but its got a long way to come before it can hold a candle to Steam as a game support platform.

Sierra Oscar

A part of me feels that they should forget about publicizing reports, and actually go ahead and implement what their customers want. If you want more customers, you have to earn them. The last thing Stardock need to do now is become bureaucratic.

Impulse has come a long way, they need to keep building on the platform.

Overheal

In fairness theyve done a lot to that end. Thats the whole idea of publishing the report, is getting the customer involved and getting feedback about what We want.

I dont see how they arent "Earning them" by reaching out to them.

In contrast the Valve platform is 6 months of silence, sweeping announcement, "This is what we're doing because we know whats best". It works, and its not like they ignore their userbase, but they do it in such a way that they can seem like real assholes a whole lot of the time.

No one way of doing things is right/wrong. Valve is very successful, and Stardock is growing Rapidly. I'd regard both as excellent private business models. Meanwhile EA is a big giant Public Monster but thats another story.

Impulse has come a long way, they need to keep building on the platform.

Impulse is definitely years behind Steam, but I think theyve well outlined what they need to develop in order to get it rolling.

Nehaxak

Don't bother with Object Desktop, it's buggy, unstable and generally just messes your operating system up.

Object Dock though is class, really like that one. The rest of their stuff is rubbish (imo anyway).

Their Impulse thingy works ok but they've little or nothing of any worth on it. Steam has all the cool stuff.

No matter how good their delivery system becomes, if they haven't got the continous decent content then nobody is going to bother.

Overheal

Nehaxak wrote: »

Don't bother with Object Desktop, it's buggy, unstable and generally just messes your operating system up.

ObjectDesktop 7?

Nehaxak

Yes. To be honest also, if you're running Windows 7 there's no need for any of this stuff as Win 7 allows a lot of customisation of your desktop.
99% of the skins etc., with OBDT/windowblinds etc., are just rotten ugly anyway and the semi decent ones you have to shell out more cash for.

Object Dock works ok with Win 7 apart from a few bugs and is the only shining star of stardocks products of any notable worth.

I had OBDT7 installed on a beta of Win 7, wouldn't even bother rating it. No way would I install it now on my proper Win 7. Far as I know I've still a couple months left on the premium sub with them and I just cba.

Again though, no regrets for purchasing the object dock premium from them, 20 dollars well spent - though it does need some fixing to work perfect with win7.

L31mr0d

Nehaxak wrote: »

is the only shining star of stardocks products of any notable worth.

Fences is also very good. I use that on my HTPC and netbook. It keeps all the icons arranged on the desktop and gives them an iPhone-y feel. You can also easily make all the icons disappear by just double clicking on the desktop. Along with launchy they are godsends for desktops with limited real estate.

I don't rate Object Dock at all. Personally I use Rocket Dock, which is just as good (for my needs anyway) and is also free.

Overheal

Nehaxak wrote: »

Yes. To be honest also, if you're running Windows 7 there's no need for any of this stuff as Win 7 allows a lot of customisation of your desktop.
99% of the skins etc., with OBDT/windowblinds etc., are just rotten ugly anyway and the semi decent ones you have to shell out more cash for.

Object Dock works ok with Win 7 apart from a few bugs and is the only shining star of stardocks products of any notable worth.

I had OBDT7 installed on a beta of Win 7, wouldn't even bother rating it. No way would I install it now on my proper Win 7. Far as I know I've still a couple months left on the premium sub with them and I just cba.

Again though, no regrets for purchasing the object dock premium from them, 20 dollars well spent - though it does need some fixing to work perfect with win7.

Thats exactly what they say in the Report, almost verbatim. Hence why theyve announced theyre contracting out professional designers for new skins - which will be made available free.

Stardock Annual wrote:

The biggest problem I had with WindowBlinds is that 99% of the skins available for WindowBlinds are terrible. While Stardock makes the program WindowBlinds, individual skinners from around the world make the skins with varying degrees of quality.

With WindowBlinds 7, Stardock recognized this problem and has addressed it in 3 ways:
1. It allows users to customize Aero itself.
2. It allows users to customize their existing favorite skins much more extensively than in the past.
3. Stardock has contracted top skinners to create professional quality skins to give away (these will start to flow out in the coming months).

Nehaxak

Yeah Fences is alright though Win7 has some minor similar abilities (drag a window to either side to see it auto snap/organise in to place). Best desktop wow appeal abilities come from Linux though with all the neat stuff you can do

Yes, Rocket dock is nice too. I liked it's ability to stack docks a bit like on the Mac though you can do this too with Object Dock with a little hack taken from Rocket Dock.

Nehaxak

Overheal wrote: »

Thats exactly what they say in the Report, almost verbatim. Hence why theyve announced theyre contracting out professional designers for new skins - which will be made available free.

Hehe, maybe they listened to my complaints after all then I didn't read the report to be honest but I'll give it a read now.

Nehaxak

The biggest problem I had with WindowBlinds is that 99% of the skins available for WindowBlinds are terrible. While Stardock makes the program WindowBlinds, individual skinners from around the world make the skins with varying degrees of quality.

Quote from the report itself so yeah, close enough

Alright, just read through the report. Decent enough of them to recognise the problems alright.
Will be another thing though to see if they actually act upon them and hold true to their word, which has always been an issue with Stardock, lots of broken promises.

I'll install Impulse and see if my sub to all the stardock stuff is still up and running, if it is then I'll give OBDT another try as WindowsBlinds 7 seems to have improvements I wasn't aware of when running it on win7 beta.

Will see how it goes anyway.

Overheal

Well you can always contrast it to the 08 and 07 reports. Ive marked great progress from them. They still need to get the brand out there though. Valve's games are so High Profile in comparison, Steam just comes along for the ride.

Sierra Oscar

Overheal wrote: »

In fairness theyve done a lot to that end. Thats the whole idea of publishing the report, is getting the customer involved and getting feedback about what We want.

I agree that discussion with the community is excellent, but in reality leaving all your development decisions to the community can prove unproductive. Also, the main type of people who will follow and focus on reports are enthusiasts, so there is a great danger that the feedback being received really does not reflect the entire community or the potential future community.

Valve learned this pretty early on in Steam's life. You have to take the initiative and do something new . . . then refine and improve on customer feedback.

If Valve listened and always acted on to initial feedback from the Steam User Forum's there would never be a Steam Community today. When it was first announced the majority of people participating in discussions thought it was a waste of time, intrusive and so on and so forth and spoke loudly against the project. It just so happens that the wider community who do not take part in development discussion welcomed the addition, and today I think all Steam user's would agree that the Steam Community is a good thing. Thats just one example of how an initial unpopular decision proves to be a success.

Impulse is StarDock's baby - if they want to learn something from Valve, it is to show initiative and be bold.:)

Nehaxak

I had to renew my sub as it had expired but for €20 it's not too bad considering the amount of stuff now included with ultimate version - including Fences Pro with is taking absolutely ages to download.
Deskscapes seems a lot more stable but WindowsBlinds 7 has already crashed windows explorer on me

Overheal

Its a Subscription service? Bit odd.

Nehaxak

Overheal wrote: »

Its a Subscription service? Bit odd.

It's a choice you can make, you can also purchase software individually if you prefer but if you want the lot then a sub probably makes more sense if there's a lot of upgrades in the pipeline outside of the current versions of what you have or are interested in that would require upgrade costs or seperate puchases. Not ideal either, as stuff like Object Dock or My Colours isn't included, surprised Fence Pro was included though.