To be fair, most games these days do that. I'd imagine that it wouldn't affect them *too* much since anyone who hasn't bought it already has been chased off for six months due to the launch.

I don't think they are the people they are worried about. It's the Stardock faithful who were already burned by Demigod and now Elemental. I can't imagine they will be making a big pre-order push again.

Recently I've been unable to convince myself to buy any game "new" DNF and Diablo3 will be my exception....
Im still waiting on package deals for Borderlands, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect 2... since waiting wont effect DRM status of New Vegas i may grab that, or i might wait for a few exspanion packs to drop and a steam sale...
Damn you steam and your forced DRM at least your games are easy to fix if you break them modding ^_^
Elemental looks interesting but not worth $50... i could see paying $30 but nothing more...

wait for two months ,they will sell it for $20

I'm not sure about Borderlands but the DLC is regularly cut in half on Steam. Dragon Age: Origins is rumored to be having an ultimate edition in October. Mass Effect 2 you may be waiting a long time for as ME3 is a long way off. All I can say is the DLC is well worth it.

Borderlands Game of the Year Edition will be released on Oct. 12

You just made my month, thank you for that info!

1) Brad should step down from day-to-day game management and get someone else to do that while he focuses on the business end and their other software.
2) I'll buy Elemental when they release a collected version of it and whatever expansions there are like Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity. At that point it should work great out of the box without needing Impulse activation and be cheaper to boot. With Civ5 coming and a backlog of games it's not a game I need right now.
3) My #2 is the reason this launch was disastrous for them.

Ouch.
Fact is, nowdays a bad launch is almost impossible for a game to recover from, unless it is in a franchise that has a strong following.
I give you "Hellgate:London" as an example.
In fact, this seems like the biggest fiasco of a bad launch since Hellgate London which is a sort of benchmark for bad launches.
Frankly, if anybody should go at Stardock it's Brad. He has totally wrecked the good will that Stardock has for being "Gamer Friendly:.
I was hesistating between Elmental and Civilization 5, but now Sid Meier will get my money in a week or so.

THat is a pretty lame defense of Stardock.
Yeah, all the publicity vis a vis the terrible launch is going to really encourage people to go out and buy the game. Forget the "Community"; in the end it is how many copies the game sells that will determine whether the game survives as a major sucess or becomes just another cult game with a miniscule following.

I would love to attack Brad and Stardock, but I don't want to kick them now they are down. I will wait till they recover.
I just hope that the whole affair will give some humility to some people there.
Something else, if you are looking for a non DOS era good strategy game with slightly similar setting, try Dominions 3 The Awakening. There is a demo there:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html
A great strategy game from a publisher that releases great games only (IMO only of course)

Even owners of a company can be ousted. Sure it's easier to do when the company is openly traded and has a board, but it can happen with privately owned ones too.

Oh please don't see my post as a defence of Stardock. If anything, it was meant to be a cynical rebuke of those gamers whose emotions sway easily with each little tidbit of information that dribbles out of a developer's mouth (fingers?). I dislike Stardock for all the hollow declarations that consistently emerge from their vivid imaginations, and I have never intended to buy Elemental for that reason alone.
I just think that any time spent on the Elemental forum leaves you with the impression that to manage the PR mess the launch created, Stardock are playing off some members of the community against each other to create hype. Some of Brad's posts aren't even logical.
For example, in his 'candid' discussion of the launch failings he says that what separates Stardock from other publishers is that they don't even consider an expansion until they are satisfied with state of the base game. He then completely contradicts this a few points down by saying that they plan to release planned expansion content in a free patch sometime after the autumn. Arse.

It seems that Stardock has many defenders, no matter what happens.