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Lo! This quite-excellent news may have passed you by a week ago as it did me, so here as a public service, I offer you last week’s news: Stardock Corporation have acquired, from Atari, the rights to classic but never incredibly popular space fun franchise Star Control! They then immediately announced “now that we at long last own the rights to Star Control we’re figuratively burying it right beside that E.T. game which nobody also played but someone you know claims they did and you punched them for it. That was the right thing to do. Punch all liars!” Okay, I kid, they didn’t say that! Who ever would? No video game corporation is that evil.

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Aieee. American game retailer GameStop has acquired Impulse, StarDock Systems’ digital distribution service. This means Stardock is getting out of the digital-distro game, essentially succumbing to Steam, and handing their infrastructure off to a brick and mortar retailer.

Civilization V Lead Designer and Programmer Jon Shafer has apparently left his job at Firaxis and moved to Plymouth, Michigan, to join Stardock Entertainment – makers of the Galactic Civilizations series and, more recently, the somewhat disastrous Elemental: War of Magic. For starters, Big Download reports, Shafer will be helping the Elemental team get that game up to some semblance of snuff; later on he’ll helm his own dev team at Stardock on another game. …

Two Mothers Of All Patches came out in the last day – Stardock Systems has released a monstrous 1.1 patch for its bomb Elemental: War of Magic, and Firaxis unleashed an update they’re actually calling The HUGE Patch to Civilization V, tweaking nearly every aspect of game AI. As the patch notes, linked above, indicate, neither of these are little bitty fixes. They are huge tracts of patch. Elemental 1.1 apparently ups the game from …

UPDATE: the consequences referred to below have begun. A round a layoffs at Stardock, alongside the termination of an upcoming (unannounced) game project, may just be the beginning.

UPDATE UPDATE: Mr. Wardell has posted a “final” remark on the Elemental flap here at the Elemental forums. One of the things I appreciate most from him on this one is that he recognizes how hard it can be for journalists to harshly criticize a game created by developers they consider friends. But it has to be done sometimes.

For those who’ve followed the 24-hour firestorm that erupted in the wake of Elemental: War of Magic’s botched Day Zero release, you’ll know that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.

Ouch. As strategy buffs may know and others should learn, Stardock Systems’ Elemental: War of Magic was released upon the earth yesterday. And apparently, it’s a disaster. PC Gamer has described it as “broken to the point of being unplayable,” and urges gamers to “stay well away.” RPS goes a bit further, accusing Stardock of violating its own Gamers Bill of Rights (now removed from the Stardock website) – specifically Right #2: “Gamers shall have …

I mean seriously, what is the matter with this guy? First he decides to stir up a pointless ruckus by complaining that Valve’s Steam service is exploitative of the little guy, a conflict of interest for Valve, and untrustworthy – an act for which he is universally condemned, and called much harsher names than I’ve called him. Then today he decides it’d be wise to further assify himself by accusing Valve/Steam’s position on PS3 sales …