I’m very conflicted about Stardock. Brad Wardell has some very… uncomfortable and problematic issues around things he’s done and said and his games have often failed in one way or another. On the other hand, he does seem to genuinely have empathy for his customers in a way that most businessmen generally don’t, especially nowadays. I mean, I got this email too and over the years I’ve been given several gifts of free games and expansions other things and just given a general feeling of accountability and generosity from this company that are just… unheard of. I don’t want to give them a pass for the things they’ve done wrong but… like damn, their apologies are pretty convincing.

They had some cool software like 20 years ago. Then they doubled down on the subscription model, and I haven’t thought about them much since then.

Hopefully they don’t lean into live service games or DLC traps.

I always forget Stardock makes games. Like, Sins of a Solar Empire is theirs, but I think of Start11.

Aren’t these guys the asshats that tried to take the rights to Star Control away from the original creators?

Hopefully they are better at game publishing than they are at their website. I remember having to clear cookie and cache every single time I wanted to log in to my account, even if I was logged in only 5 minutes prior.

I associate them with WindowBlinds and adding a start menu to Windows 8. Probably haven’t thought about them since.

I thought indie publishing was already their thing.