Stardock arrives on Steam, starting with Sins of a Solar Empire

Now that Stardock has sold its digital distribution business to GameStop , it was only a matter of time before we saw games like the stellar space war strategy Sins of a Solar Empire pop up on Steam , where it'll find a whole new universe of customers who might never even have heard of Impulse .

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell says, “With the sale of our former PC digital download technology to GameStop earlier this year, we no longer have any conflicts of interest in offering our titles to other digital distribution channels. We are starting with Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity with other titles being made available over the coming weeks.”

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity combines the original game with its two expansions, Entrenchment and Diplomacy, both of which substantially changed the game and made it much more of a 4X strategy game than a traditional RTS. While the game plays out in real-time, the scope steadily increases as players begin managing empires with several colonies and dozens of star systems, and battles go from small skirmishes to titanic fleet actions. Fair warning: I've known some Sins multiplayer matches to last several hours, so clear your schedule before diving into an interplanetary conflict.

If you want to learn more about Sins and how these expansions evolved the game, you can listen to me, Troy Goodfellow, Tom Chick, and Julian Murdoch discuss it on Three Moves Ahead last year.