Stardock announced more that 100,000 digital copies of Rebellion have been sold, which apparently was better than they'd expected. This includes their private distribution as well as Steam sales. It's the first game Stardock has released for digital sale only, and this has convinced them to stick with the digital only model in the future. Brad Wardell explains:

"I remember it was somewhat dramatic in the community when we announced that Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion wasn't going to be at retail. The reason was because we have moved away from having set release dates, which are largely announced for to kickoff presales, or for shareholders and retail distributors. Now we don't plan a release date until the game has reached a quality level where we feel comfortable doing so.

Retailers require a six-month lead-in to reserve shelf space for indies, and that's if you can get in. By contrast, with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, we didn't set a release date until after the public BETA feedback was universally positive."

Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO

First off, awesome for Stardock and by all accounts the game's pretty damn good. Wasn't someone on the GB staff interested in this? Was it Drew? Maybe I'm thinking of another game. A QL would be soooo awesome though.

Also, does this portend more changes ahead for Indie devs at least, and the bigger fish later? Are we seeing the start of digital only services taking over as the dominant distribution method? Works for some already obviously.

Stardock deserves something like this.

Good. We have too many studios not doing well and it's good to hear positive news for a change.

Great to hear that games like this can still be successful. Good for them for both that and for finding a distribution model that they're comfortable with.

I love Stardock. Stardock Central was my first experience with buying a game online. I used it to purchase the GalCiv games and I was very impressed at how easy it was. The software would also automatically patch my games!

This stuff is commonplace nowadays with Steam, but Stardock was the first to get it right.

I am really glad that Sins is doing well for them, its an awesome franchise.

I bought trinity on steam for 5 bucks. Still warming up to it but it seems cool. Any tips would be barest as its pretty damn complicated