Stardock’s “Goo” DRM Makes Steamworks Obsolete

Posted 03/26/2009 at 12:11am | by Nathan Grayson

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Remember when Stardock outlined its plan to breed a half-DRM, half-helpful hybrid in order to violently obliterate DRM once and for all? We’re a bit foggy on it, to be honest, but we’re pretty sure the press release starred Wesley Snipes.

Well, anyway, the publisher recently unveiled the fruits of its labor, and amazingly, this slow starter just rocketed to the head of the class. Sorry, Steamworks – the second row isn’t so bad.

The stipulations of the DRM, known as Game Object Obfuscation (or “Goo” for short), are as follows:

1. There is no third-party client required. This means a developer can use this as a universal solution since it is not tied to any particular digital distributor.
2. It paves the way to letting users validate their game on any digital distribution service that supports that game. One common concern of gamers is if the company they purchased a game from exits the market, their game library may disappear too. Games that use Goo would be able to be validated anywhere.
3. It opens the door to gamers being able to resell their games because users can voluntarily disable their game access and transfer their license ownership to another user.

True ownership of your game library – as opposed to paying for the right to play your games until their distributor shuts down? We really can’t find anything to complain about here. How about you?
 
Goo launches on April 7 with Stardock’s Impulse distribution platform’s next release.