founded livonia michigan 1991 headquarters plymouth michigan united states june 18 2005 key people brad wardell ceo products elemental fallen enchantress elemental war of magic sins of a solar empire object desktop mycolors windowblinds galactic civilizations galactic civilizations ii desktopx iconpackager deskscapes fences neowin.net star control revenue 15 million 2009 1 number of employees 50 may 2012 website www.stardock.com stardock headquarters building stardock corporation is a software development company founded in 1991 and incorporated in 1993 as stardock systems . stardock initially developed for the os 2 platform but was forced to switch to windows due to the collapse of the os 2 software market between 1997 and 1998 . citation needed the company is best known for computer programs that allow a user to modify or extend a graphical user interface as well as personal computer games particularly strategy games such as galactic civilizations galactic civilizations ii sins of a solar empire and elemental war of magic . 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 object desktop their main subscription service . they are based in plymouth michigan usa . contents 1 pc software 1.1 utilities 1.2 wincustomize 1.3 game development 1.4 game publishing 1.5 digital distribution 1.6 business partnerships 2 history 2.1 os 2 era 1993 2001 2.2 windows era 1998 present 2.3 litigation 3 references 4 external links pc software edit stardock s best known citation needed product for pc users is object desktop . it is a set of desktop enhancement utilities designed to enable users to control 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 . the core components of object desktop include windowblinds iconpackager deskscapes desktopx fences windowfx and others . in 2012 stardock added a new program start8 to object desktop . start8 adds a start button and start menu to windows 8 . 2 in 2015 stardock added a new program start10 to object desktop . start10 adds a start menu to windows 10 that looks similar to windows 7 s start menu . 3 utilities edit stardock develops a line of utilities including multiplicity keepsafe and others designed to increase productivity and stability on windows . its most popular utility objectdock provides similar functionality to the dock found in mac os x but with additional capabilities . the plus version of objectdock includes tabbed categories . wincustomize edit 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 . game development edit stardock has an in house game developer that has created pc games including the corporate machine galactic civilizations galactic civilizations ii galactic civilizations ii dark avatar galactic civilizations ii twilight of the arnor and the political machine . the dark avatar expansion pack is the highest rated expansion pack for a pc game on gamerankings . 4 in august 2010 stardock released elemental war of magic a fantasy 4x turn based strategy game . game publishing edit in 2006 following the commercial success of their first self published game galactic civilizations ii 5 stardock began publishing games developed by third parties . stardock published stellar frontier a multiplayer space strategy shooter game made by doug hendrix in 1995 . stardock closed the master server on august 4 2006 ceasing official support for multiplayer mode but released the source code in 2008 under a shared source license . 6 7 as result the game s community took over the support of the game and improved the game fixed the bugs and security holes with own made patches . 8 the first third party game stardock published was sins of a solar empire . the publishing arrangement worked out between stardock and ironclad games was unusual in that the two companies integrated their teams at every level . 9 the game has an average score of 88 on metacritic and is a top seller at retail . 10 the second third party game stardock published is demigod from developer gas powered games . it was released in 2009 . digital distribution edit 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 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 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 11 and indeed the service now includes content from a variety of publishers . the platform was sold to gamestop in may 2011 . 12 13 after 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 14 business partnerships edit stardock s dominance of windows desktop enhancement technology 15 has led to many companies licensing its technology to improve the windows experience . notable customers have included hp who distributes stardock fences pro and mycolors on their hp envy line of laptops citation needed dell whose new windows experience initiative leverages stardock s dock technology citation needed microsoft who contracted stardock to provide the default animated wallpapers for windows vista ultimate citation needed alienware which distribute pcs with theme manager oem branded alienguise citation needed ati which use directskin for their catalyst control center 16 the university of michigan and florida state university two mycolors participants the nba also a mycolors participant 17 history edit founded by college student brad wardell and named after raymond e. feist s riftwar saga stardock began as a custom pc maker but quickly expanded into making software . os 2 era 1993 2001 edit stardock s initial software product was a computer game for os 2 called galactic civilizations . stardock never actually received any royalties from the initial sales of galactic civilizations due to publisher fraud citation needed but 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 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 the hundreds . brad wardell estimates that the death of os 2 set the company back by about three years . 18 windows era 1998 present edit 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 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 next five years . although it is not true that stardock was responsible for the msstyle skinning engine in windows xp the release of this operating system did stimulate sales in stardock products and despite growing competition proportional to the market the company remains in a strong position . in 2001 they added 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 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 2004 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 the royalties it owed . 19 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 . 20 in response to the disappointment to elemental war of magic stardock committed to giving the second game of the series elemental fallen enchantress to early adopters of war of magic . 21 in 2012 q2 stardock successfully launched sins of a solar empire rebellion to positive reviews . 22 this version was co developed by stardock and development partner ironclad games . in 2012 q4 stardock launched elemental fallen enchantress . in july 2013 stardock bought the star control franchise from the atari bankruptcy proceedings and has plans to reboot the franchise . 23 on the 14th of august 2014 stardock launched the third installment of galactic civilizations as an early access title on both steam as well as their own site . expected live release date is april 2015 . 24 in october 2014 stardock ceo brad wardell confirmed via twitter that the company would never have a public stock offering . 25 litigation edit stardock has been involved in litigation in relation to their business in 1998 they were sued by entrepreneur magazine for use of the trademark name entrepreneur for one of their games . stardock claimed that their use of this word was not related to the magazine s business but did not have the money to fight the case the name was changed to business tycoon ; a later version was rebranded as the corporate machine . citation needed in december 2003 tgtsoft sued stardock and brad wardell for declarative relief claiming that they should be able to use the iconpackager . iptheme file format without charge . many open source programs do read and write proprietary file formats without paying royalties for example openoffice.org reads and writes word excel powerpoint and other microsoft office files . however stardock maintained that they should