wizisi2k: if I remember correctly, it was either devote more recourses to Impulse that would be taken from game/software development OR sell the service.
i followed this closely: Brad said Impulse though profitable, was a drain on human resources. That time spent working on Impulse, was time taken away from the gaming unit(s). His solution was to sell Impulse.
i have not the facts to judge his decision to sell. But we have his words. Such as a justification for selling Impulse rather than hiring more staff.. was because the physical location of stardocks offices made it difficult to recruit new people. That it was a sucky place to live and that's why brad couldn't hire more people. He spoke of this many times in web interviews in text and podcast. i heard His words with my own ears. Then not long after gamestop actually took over impulse, brad began speaking of how nice a place to live it was at stardock central. He was recruiting then, trying to hire more people. Presumably the income from the sale funded an expansion requiring investment in human resource. So now, his story changed.. Stardock central becomes a nice place to live. Where before it sucked. This being just one example of where brad says what he thinks will help him, not what is true. There are many more. So everything he says is suspect.
As to his decision to sell... well i don't have the facts to judge that. i do wonder why not hire a management staff. Or contract with a company who handles exactly what brad was having a beef with (international sales of digitally distributed software). But i don't know. i don't take issue with the decision to sell. i take issue with selling it to an outfit like gamestop. That companies history clearly speaks contrary to what brad was preaching impulse and stardock to be. And sure enough once gamestop took over, the terms of service and privacy policy became unagreeable to me. My access to future updates to the broken game i owned, was now controlled by a company who forced a policy i do not accept. This meant that i could not receive the critical updates which were to make the game playable. And it suggested that i might at some future point not even be able to play the game without the third party client attached. stardock later created their own store for which users can redownload and get updates. But back then stardock wasn't talking. For months they left us in the dark as to if we would have a non-gamestop access to our games. So much for stardocks "friendly, respectful openness". brad uses what he thinks helps him in the moment. There is no conviction behind his words. He says what serves at the time. Truth and reality be of no object to brad. So his words be of no help to me.