Shortly after GameStop announced that it purchased the Impulse digital platform from Stardock, IndustryGamers heard from GamersGate CEO Theo Bergquist who basically bashed Impulse as "nothing more than a few games and an outdated digital distribution platform." Bergquist also suggested that GameStop paid next to nothing to get Impulse. Stardock boss Brad Wardell was taken aback by this.
Wardell qualified his comments with “I like GamersGate so I don't want us getting into a pissing match with them," but he essentially implied that GamersGate is attacking out of a position of weakness.
“In my experience, especially when a company CEO is criticizing another company, you usually learn a lot more about the company doing the criticizing. I'm not a marketer but I know enough from being in this industry for years, and usually you punch up. You don't punch down," Wardell observed to us.
He also said that the technologies are quite different and he now questions whether GamersGate is actually worth much as a business.
"His criticism of our technology is kind of a 'neener- neener' thing. He runs a web store and there's nothing wrong with that, but technologically Impulse and GamersGate are not the same sort of thing. But what surprised me the most was his comments about the revenue, suggesting that Impulse wasn't that valuable," Wardell continued.
"My assumption has been that all the digital distributors are making money hand over fist. I mean, we had increased our revenue by over 300% last year. Steam had done the same thing. I assumed that everyone was incredibly profitable at this... so it surprised me and made me wonder if maybe these profit margins are only relevant to digital distributors who are running actual platforms like Impulse or Steam, where the entire experience is provided. Steam and Impulse are essentially the App Store model whereas GamersGate is more like Direct2Drive. I would have assumed if GamersGate was getting bought that they would get tens of millions of dollars from it, even though we're pretty sure we have a larger market share than they do. So it made me question if GamersGate is doing as well as I assumed they were..."
