Stardock Competes with Steam
At this year's GDC, Stardock announced Impulse: Reactor, a suite of community tools that developers can easily build into their games. It's like Steamworks, but friendlier.
Impulse: Reactor offers DRM, friends lists, social network integration (Facebook/Twitter), chat, matchmaking, achievements, cloud storage and server lists - the whole nine online yards - and yet unlike Steamworks, it doesn't come with any pesky exclusivity issues. For instance, if a game chooses to incoporate Steamworks, it can only be sold on Steam.
If a crew decides to go with Impulse: Reactor, they'll have to sell their game on Impulse (the Stardock digital distribution service), but they'll also be able to sell their game anywhere else. On the user end, it's nice to know that Impulse::Drive doesn't require a client.
You can read more about Impulse: Reactor at Stardock CEO Brad Wardell's blog, and you can count on reading more about this service's showdown with Steamworks in the future.
-calimer