Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has revealed on Gamastura that Sins of a Solar Empire has now sold 500,000 units with 400,000 sold at retail and 100,000 sold via digital distribution. This is a great success for a relatively low-key game which has been able to generate a strong following over the months since it was released.

Wardell feels that the success of the game can be put down in part to the low system requirements that Sins has.

“Sins of a Solar Empire was explicitly designed to work on a wide variety of machines, It will run on a four-year-old video card, and it looks great.”

“You make those kinds of design decisions, and you greatly increase the number of people who can play your game. You lose out on some piddly super-mega effect, but you get those units. The results come in sales.”

Wardell was talking about the decision that was made to stop ship turrets moving in-game. In a world where games like Crysis are demanding the latest in computer technology to play well it is a delight to see Sins playable on older hardware. A smart design decision by Stardock and Ironclad Games.

The ever amazing Stardock have released a PC Gamer’s Bill of Rights which sets out ten key points which PC gamer’s can expect the company to uphold and which they hope other developers and publishers will adopt in time.

“As an industry, we need to begin setting some basic, common sense standards that reward PC gamers for purchasing our games,” stated Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock Corporation. “The console market effectively already has something like this in that its games have to go through the platform maker such as Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony. But on the PC, publishers can release games that are scarcely completed, poorly supported, and full of intrusive copy protection and then be stuck on it.”

Wardell is entirely correct, we often get the short end of the stick when it comes to how we are treated by developers, publishers and even retailers. This is the kind of thing which should be adopted by many companies involved in PC games be it making them or selling them.

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I think it is time I got round to talking about The Political Machine 2008, the latest in Bobble-Head Political Games from Stardock Interactive. I recently defeated Ulysses S. Grant in the US Presidential Election with Barack Obama as my Vice President.

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Demigod the RTS-FPS hybrid from Gas Powered Games has been pushed back to a February 2009 release and is due to be released via Stardock. As with many other games on Stardock Demigod will be released with no copy protection.

The delay until 2009 is down to Gas Powered Games wishing to take stock of results from the upcoming Summer Beta and the delay will give them time to implement these changes. It has also been revealed that the game has been budgeted to provide a whole host of post-release free updates.

“Not only do we have a proven retail publisher, but we get to partner with a pioneer in the digital distribution space…a company that totally understands what kind of experience our customer wants and the quality game they demand,” said Gas Powered Games founder and CEO Chris Taylor. “The whole proposition is truly refreshing.?

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