You do realize who Frogboy is, and that there's less than zero chance of him being fired no matter what he does, right?

I didn't mean his ass being fried in the company but in the public. Doesn't matter who he is when the public sees a quote like that, even out of context, because it is a bad image for him and his company. Just as an example (meaning not him), if some racist headed a company who said questionable things all the time would you want to buy products from that company after hearing about this?

If their product had nothing to do with their ethical/moral beliefs, then I would have no problem. If a CEO is racist, does it make their widget any less widgety?

I wouldn't feel comfortable giving a de facto endorsement to an amoral person, much less an immoral one. To each their own I guess.

Ok, I'll apologize in advance for my "ranting tone".
That is NOT the problem. The retail version was printed weeks ago, and it has all of the bugs seen in the "rushed" DD version they put out (which, might I say, had been "updated" with many "fixes" when compared to the actual gold, retail version). The retail version distributed doesn't even have multiplayer enabled, even though it says so in the box.
Now, what's the second item in the Gamer's Bill of Rights?
"Gamers shall have the right that games they purchase shall function as designed without technical defects that would materially affect the player experience. This determination shall be made by the player".
So, they were NOT screwed by retailers. It's rather the other way around - they screwed retailers (and customers) by shipping an unfinished version of the game to retail, long before "graciously" providing a "rushed" version for DD customers.
So, the whole "forced release because of retailers" is nothing but a red herring.
In addition, the only way to "fix" the unfinished retail version (for example, to have functioning multiplayer) is downloading patches through Impulse, and those patches can not be acquired from any other place or in any other way. But wait, what's the 4th item in the Gamer's Bill of Rights?
"Gamers shall have the right to have their games not require a third-party download manager installed in order for the game to function".
Let's face the facts here: this is a big mess, and it's nobody's fault except Stardock's.
That being said, I can stand buying unfinished games at release (I wouldn't buy most Paradox games otherwise). What I can't stand is seeing the developer not only mistreat customers, but also use lies and red herrings to try to undermine their own responsability. If Stardock wants to be big, they have to grow up.
The saddest thing is that the whole Demigod mess was still better than this, because, in that case, Stardock at least admitted some of its responsability in the whole thing.
Ok, rant over. Sorry about that, but I'm really frustrated with this whole thing.

I haven't bothered doing it but I believe that still works, yes. It's only the Dragon Age DLC though, the Mass Effect 2 files do not have similar entries.
I would assume one could download cracked DLCs, but I haven't bothered looking for that either as of yet. I'm not going to back all that stuff up in DRM-free condition until it's all out and no more is coming.

While it sounds like a lot of the issues with the game have been dealt with, Stardock is now reaping what they've sown for awhile now.
Brad Wardell is a walking PR nightmare. You have Stardock employees running around verbally smacking down those who disagree with the direction Impulse has gone in. And their claims of 'DRM Free' have been an utter lie for years. All of it is coming to a head at the exact same time.
HOPEFULLY this will cause them to grow the Hell up.

Too late, IMO. I bought a number of games from them and was snowed by Brad's 'gamer friendly' schtick for a while as well. But all these antics mean I won't deal with them anymore. I don't need to deal with someone like that. There are plenty of other games to play, and plenty of other distributors to buy from. I'm done with Stardock and Impulse.

This. +1

I agree as well, Stardock started well enough, but it has been as slippery slope in terms of PR and goodwill. They effectively killed all my interest in them with this drama, and thanks to their anaemic UK sales, it wasn't high to begin with. Ah well, my trifecta of GoG, Steam and GG serves all my gaming needs perfectly.

This too, is just a recycled excuse. They made the exact same comment when Demigod was released. Again, stating that retailers releasing it early was the reason they game was so poor (that and all the pirates...). While I might believe that the first time it's used as an excuse, the second time? Nope. Don't buy it.
The problem here, is that if this is actually true, and not just an excuse, then all it's doing is showing how incompetent Stardock are in their handling of distribution. Perhaps they should just admit that they aren't capable of doing everything and go the same route as Valve; use the EA partners program to handle retail.
Of course, if they did that, they wouldn't be able to use that excuse anymore...
As for the comments that they merely published Demigod, that isn't entirely true. They actually co-developed it (Stardock were responsible for coding the all the network handling, IIRC -- or at least, that was the impression "Frogboy" was giving with several of his news updates).

Just to add to that a developer keeps fixing a game as long as the publisher is paying the bills. If Stardock truly wanted to fix Demigod the way it was supposed to be fixed they would pay GPG to fix it. Similar story with Alpha Protocol. Obsidian want to fix it but Sega ain't paying for it.

Too bad that don't do what the devs for Anachronox did. They released patches regardless of being paid for it. Mind you, they had already been shut down at the time =/

With Obsidian working on at least 3 projects right now I think that would be hard to do time-wise, if not money-wise, plus they would have to pay Microsoft and Sony to release patches on their networks, stupidly.
Didn't I read Alpha Protocol sold surprisingly well on PC though? Or was that another game? Maybe a PC-only patch could be worked out, or maybe Sega would let them open up the game a bit so modders could fix it.

Are there a lot of issues with Alpha Protocol? From what I've read, it seemed to be surprisingly bug-free and stable.