[Arryn]

Originally posted by PhilD:
I'd say I liked the Stardock support of Galactic Civilizations better. There would typically be one minor patch a week in the months following release, and I don't remember them breaking anything - testing was done more thoroughly. Of course, I believe Stardock is much more a full-time company than Illwinter is.

Oh, and Stardock is going to release a (non-free) expansion pack for GalCiv, but that's after about one year of continued support, including a free expansion pack. Plus, since GalCiv has no multiplayer, there is no pressure to buy it other than the new content (which seems quite nice, BTW - might have to share my playing time to pick up GC again).

There's a 1.2x update to GalCiv. Check with Stardock Central.

Stardock has stated, repeatedly, that they subsidize GalCiv with the proceeds from their commercial, non-gaming products. Plus they are a larger, better-established company that's been around a lot longer. It's not a particularly good comparison to IW, IMO.

With regards to breaking things: no one's perfect. I don't mind Utgard getting broken so much as the time it's taking IW to get a fix out for it, considering that KO knew what was wrong within minutes of my reporting the bug. IMO, the patch should have been quickly "recalled", the fix added, and then re-released. Or a mini-patch (2.08a) made to just fix what got broken. I find it somewhat annoying that they appear to be leaving the Utgard fix for their regular update process. When most other gaming companies (not Paradox) break something in a patch they release a revised patch within hours, or at most a couple of days. 2.08 was 9 days ago ...