Needs More Twinkle

Stardock honours Gamer's Bill of Rights, pushes back release date.

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By Nathan Davis on 10 February, 2009

Renowned to swim upstream on issues where most others just go with the flow, PC games developer and publisher Stardock prides itself and its games around an unusually strong ethics system. It has previously published a ten-point list it dubs the Gamer’s Bill of Rights and even called upon other developers and publishers to adopt the list as their own philosophy for game distribution.

Today, the company has decided to hold off on the launch of Entrenchment, the expansion pack for Sins of a Solar Empire. This is to extend the open beta period so as to add more polish to the title through player feedback. “We want fans to get the most of this expansion and are making sure we’re delivering the best content possible,” says Stardock’s chief executive officer, Brad Wardell.

Of course, the pause in releasing this expansion pack is fulfilling the second of Stardock gamers’s rights, which states “Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.” Living up to this, I believe, is a good thing, but really hammers home the sort of world we now live in.

A finished game is unfortunately both a selling point and a rarity, particularly on the PC, as releasing patches that fix glaring bugs is very much the norm. When announcing the Gamer’s Bill of Rights, Wardell said “We want as many people as possible to sign this – particularly publishers, because developers are typically at the mercy of publishers.” We haven’t received word on anyone else having signed up in support.

Amid studio closures and mass sackings right across the games-industry, Stardock last week announced it was opening a development studio and preparing to create an entirely new role-playing game.

Entrenchment will now be available via Stardock’s digital distribution platform, Impulse, on a North American 25th of February.

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