Stardock hits back at GamersGate criticisms

Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock, has rebuffed criticisms from rival firm GamersGate, suggesting that vocal attacks on the firm are made from a position of weakness.

GamersGate CEO Theo Bergquist had previously described Stardock's Impulse service as "an outdated distribution platform", while implying that the recent purchase by GameSpot had been at "a bargain".

Speaking to IndustryGamers, Wardell countered the comments, suggesting that: "In my experience, especially when a company CEO is criticising another company, you usually learn a lot more about the company doing the criticising. 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."

"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 added.

"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," concluded Wardell.