Dominions is an old niche game with ugly graphics. You can try convincing someone to it, but price tag is just stupid. Especially for digital copy.
It's not like there are any ads for dom [well, there are, but we all wish there weren't]. They have digital download, they can as well make it .torrent link and sell cd-key. Manual is on torrents too. So their costs here are around $0. All they need is to pay IW smth [but we can't know for sure what's the deal], and it's certainly is not $40+ per copy.
So it's all just down to IW that does not care about proper distribution [so they are a bit rude and arrogant towards clients/players] and Shrapnel, which has no idea about doing business or treating people [but it's so common in business, even huge companies like Dell or HP].
And I have bad feeling next IW's game will be released by Shrapnel too
It'd be nice to never see them again.