You Can't Spell "Inertia" Without Inert

So I should be asleep by now because I have a tax preparation appointment early tomorrow morning. Nonetheless I felt it important enough that, before my head hit the pillow tonight, I buy Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire expansion and start it downloading. It's ten bucks, I can handle it.

Now, even back in Hawai'i I was fully prepared for the pay-per-download experience. I have a Steam account, and Valve has slowly gotten me used to the concept of not worrying where my installation CDs are anymore. That being said, this new Sins expansion isn't hosted on Steam. It never will be hosted on Steam. It's Unsteamable. The reason is that Stardock has their own online game store. Instead of "Steam powered", theirs is "Impulse driven". The momentum jokes are legion.

Impulse is, sadly, not a Steam clone. It's more of a Steam also-ran, in the sense that when you buy a game on Steam, the following events happen in order:

1. You find a game you want to buy.
2. You enter your credit card information and click "Purchase".
3. You can start downloading the game.
4. When the game is fully downloaded, you play it.
5. Elation.

Here is my experience thus far with Impulse:

1. You find a game you want to buy.
2. You enter your Paypal information. A bunch of blank IE windows pop up every time you hit "Next".
3. You get presented with a page saying that your order is pending and that you will be sent download instructions in e-mail shortly.
4. Time passes.

I see little gain in having an Impulse client installed and running on my gaming machine if it can't actually get any Impulse games faster or more easily than buying them through a third-party website. I can put my credit card information into any game studio's website and wait for any of them to process my order and send me a download link. Steam makes all of this fairly self-contained: you can buy from the online store or you can buy through the local Steam client and if all pretty much looks and feels identical. Most importantly, Steam makes all of this pretty much instantaneous. Once you submit your credit card info, your account is charged and you get instant access to the bits.

Impulse, on the other hand, seems to be an elaborate new kind of web browser that doesn't get you your games any faster than IE or Firefox. I must have been mistaken then when I wrote that Impulse is a Steam also-ran. It's more accurately an Opera also-ran.