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27-528: Stardock created and maintains WinCustomize , a graphical user interface customization community, and developed the Impulse content delivery system before its sale to GameStop . Many of the skins and themes featured on its site are for software that is part of their Object Desktop windows desktop suite. They are based in Plymouth, Michigan . Stardock was founded by college student Brad Wardell and named after

54-593: A game developer with their first title, Galactic Civilizations for the OS/2 platform in 1994. Stardock also published Stellar Frontier in 1995, a multiplayer space strategy/shooter game made by Doug Hendrix. Stardock found success developing online software subscription services such as Object Desktop for the PC, which allowed them to slowly grow a separate game division. After the release of The Corporate Machine and Lightweight Ninja , Stardock remade Galactic Civilizations for

81-512: A widget creation and desktop modification tool, DesktopX, based on Alberto Riccio's VDE. This has not had such a wide uptake as other products; some believe this is because it is harder to use and to create for, others because users do not understand the functionality that it offers. DesktopX competes with Konfabulator and Kapsules in the widget arena. In 2003, Stardock became a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with their "Designed for Windows" certification of WindowBlinds. Stardock's success in

108-585: A Dark Age , a multiplayer online battle arena game set in a pre-war fantasy environment. A standalone expansion pack called Rebellion , was also released for Sins of a Solar Empire on June 12, 2012. In 2022 Ironclad announced Sins of a Solar Empire 2, Beta Starting October 27, 2022 Ironclad's Iron Engine supports a number of advanced features including per-pixel specular lighting , dynamic fractal generation , post-process bloom filtering, environment mapping , custom pixel and vertex shaders for all meshes and effects and an advanced particle system. v1.0

135-536: A game that features a mix of components from real-time strategy and 4X strategy games. They released the Entrenchment expansion on February 11, 2009. The second expansion pack, Diplomacy , was released on February 9, 2010: the Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity combination package, which included the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions, was also released on the same day. On February 21, 2012, they announced Sins of

162-469: A major city in Raymond E. Feist 's Riftwar Cycle . Stardock began as a custom PC maker and expanded into making software. Stardock's initial product was a computer game for OS/2 called Galactic Civilizations . Stardock did not receive the majority of royalties from the initial sales of Galactic Civilizations due to publisher bankruptcy in addition to taking on many of the publisher's responsibilities, but

189-460: A yearly subscription fee and receive new titles as they became available. Initially, Stardock's own titles along with titles from Strategy First were available. A year later, Stardock replaced the subscription model with a new system called TotalGaming.net in which users could purchase games individually or pay an upfront fee for tokens which allowed them to purchase games at a discount. TotalGaming.net targeted independent game developers rather than

216-554: Is a website that provides content for users to customize Microsoft Windows . The site hosts thousands of skins , themes , icons , wallpapers , and other graphical content to modify the Windows graphical user interface . There is some premium or paid content, however, the vast majority of the content is free for users to download. WinCustomize was launched in March 2001 by Brad Wardell and Pat Ford , both of whom work at Stardock . After

243-698: The dot-com recession had taken down many popular skin sites, WinCustomize quickly grew in popularity due to a combination of wide variety of content, uptime reliability, and being the preferred content destination by Stardock customers. The site has grown at a far greater pace than its founders had anticipated. It has managed to avoid having to put many limitations on users or having to resort to pop-up advertising because of its corporate patron Stardock subsidizing its costs. This growth has prompted several site redesigns to offer improved functionality and reliability to users. Since launch, WinCustomize has undergone several iterations: WinCustomize 2k5  — Launched at

270-470: The PC. A successful sequel was self-published by Stardock, allowing them to grow their publishing business for third-party games, including titles such as Sins of a Solar Empire , Demigod, and Ashes of the Singularity . Having developed Stardock Central to digitally distribute its own PC titles, the company launched a service called Drengin.net in summer 2003. The original idea was that users would pay

297-560: The WC v6 project aims be a major revision to how users navigate and interact with the site and the community as a whole. Where 2k7 was focused on the core codebase, v6 is focused on the user interface and experience. In July 2007 the WinCustomize Wiki was launched. WinCustomize 2010  — WinCustomize 2010 was launched on April 20, 2010. This major revision represents a major change in the sites look and navigation for users. A guided tour of

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324-467: The Windows game market has been mixed. At first, its titles on Windows were published by third parties: The Corporate Machine ( Take 2 ), Galactic Civilizations ( Strategy First ), and The Political Machine ( Ubisoft ). While all three titles sold well at retail, Stardock was unsatisfied with the amount of revenue Windows games developers received. In the case of Galactic Civilizations , publisher Strategy First filed for bankruptcy without paying most of

351-451: The dock found in Mac OS X , but with additional capabilities. In 2012, Stardock added Start8 to Object Desktop, which adds a Start button and Start menu to Windows 8, whose lack of a traditional Start menu in favor of a Start screen received polarizing reception. A similar program, Start10, was created in 2015 to add a Start menu to Windows 10 that looks similar to Windows 7's Start Menu. Start10

378-425: The end of 2004, WinCustomize was redesigned for improved stability, and added functionality, such as personal pages for subscribers, an articles system, tutorials etc. WinCustomize 2k7  — Launched January 15, 2007, WC2k7 was a fundamental rewrite using ASP.NET . The focus was to build a foundation that was easier to maintain and, in the future, expand. WinCustomize v6  — Planned for Late 2008/Early 2009,

405-507: The franchise. This resulted in the release of Star Control Origins , a prequel to the original Star Control game, which was released in September 2018 to mixed reviews. Throughout development, the original creators of the Star Control license kept the game under tumultuous legal status. Stardock's Object Desktop is a set of PC desktop enhancement utilities designed to enable users to control

432-569: The hundreds. Brad Wardell estimates that the death of OS/2 set the company back by about three years. The newer, smaller Stardock was heavily reliant on the goodwill of its previous customers, who essentially purchased Windows subscriptions for Object Desktop in anticipation of the products it would consist of. Having put together a basic package (including some old favorites from the OS/2 era) Stardock began to bring in external developers to create original products. Stardock's first major Windows success

459-453: The larger publishers. In late 2008, new token purchases were discontinued. In 2008, Stardock announced its third-generation digital distribution platform , Impulse . Stardock's intention was for Impulse to include independent third-party games and major publisher titles and indeed, the service now includes content from a variety of publishers. The platform was sold to GameStop in May 2011. After

486-577: The market had been created for subsequent addon packs including the Shipyards expansion, and Stardock later sold a significant number of licenses to IBM for part of its Family FunPak (under the name Star Emperor ). Stardock went on to create OS/2 Essentials, and its successor, Object Desktop, which provided the company with a large base of users. At about this time, IBM decided to abandon OS/2. However, they did not make this decision public, and Stardock continued to develop applications software and games for

513-450: The new site was published for users. Programs heavily associated with Windows customization include: Ironclad Games Ironclad Games is a Canadian PC game developer . The company was founded in 2003 by former employees of Rockstar Vancouver . Ironclad is located in Burnaby , British Columbia . Ironclad released their first game, Sins of a Solar Empire on February 4, 2008,

540-428: The platform, including Avarice and Entrepreneur . With the advent of Windows NT 4 , Stardock found that their core user base was slipping away, and was forced to reinvent itself as a Windows developer, but not before it lost most of its money and staff. A key revealing point was the failure of its game Trials of Battle , a 3D hovercraft fighting game, which Stardock expected to sell a million copies and instead sold in

567-461: The royalties it owed. This ultimately led to Stardock self-publishing its future titles. Because of the success of its desktop applications, Stardock has been able to self-fund its own PC games and aid third-party developers with their games as well. In 2010 Q3, Stardock was forced into layoffs due to the unexpectedly poor launch of Elemental: War of Magic . In response to the disappointment of Elemental: War of Magic , Stardock committed to giving

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594-437: The sale of Impulse to GameStop and the lack of success in major sales, Stardock's titles have started to appear on rival digital distribution services such as Steam . ThinkDesk was a productivity application subscription service, launched by Stardock on 14 April 2005 as a utility counterpart to their Object Desktop and TotalGaming.net services. Subscriptions were for one year, after which users could choose to renew or keep

621-513: The second game of the series, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress to early adopters of War of Magic. In 2012, Stardock successfully launched Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion to positive reviews. This version was co-developed by Stardock and development partner Ironclad Games . In July 2013, Stardock bought the Star Control franchise from the Atari, SA bankruptcy proceedings and has plans to reboot

648-428: The software that they have, including all released upgrades to that date. The service never came out of beta and was discontinued in March 2009. ThinkDesk components were typically downloaded using Impulse, although if purchased separately they could also be downloaded as executable installers. They included: Stardock has been involved in litigation in relation to their business: WinCustomize WinCustomize

675-465: The way their operating system looks, feels and functions. Originally developed for OS/2, the company released a version of it for Windows in 1999. Components of Object Desktop include WindowBlinds , IconPackager , DeskScapes , DesktopX , Fences and WindowFX , as well as utilities such as Multiplicity and SpaceMonger designed to increase productivity and stability on Windows. Stardock also sells ObjectDock , which provides similar functionality to

702-536: Was then followed by Start11, which aims to bring back Start menu and task bar functionality removed in Windows 11 . Stardock owns and operates a number of community-centric websites, the most popular of which is WinCustomize . WinCustomize is best known for providing a library of downloadable content, such as skins, themes, icons and wallpapers for the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Stardock began operating as

729-473: Was with WindowBlinds, an application originated by a partnership with developer Neil Banfield. There turned out to be a large market for skinnable products, and Stardock prospered, growing significantly in the following five years. The release of Windows XP stimulated sales in Stardock products, and despite growing competition proportional to the market the company remains in a strong position. In 2001, they added

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