Sins of a Solar Empire total 500K

Much ado has been made over the state of PC gaming, and whether it is being slowly strangled into nonexistence by unfettered illegal file-sharing. While many companies have resorted to intrusive digital-rights management programs to keep their games out of the hands of pirates, Stardock entertainment has built a reputation of including no such measures to counter file-sharing, out of what it calls respect for the customer.

So how has this strategy panned out for the gamemaker's first third-party-published title, Ironclad Games' Sins of a Solar Empire? As reported by gaming trade site Gamasutra, Sins of a Solar Empire has surpassed 400,000 units at retail, with another 100,000 units digitally distributed through Stardock's online store, since the PC game went on sale in February. That's not a bad figure, considering Sins reportedly cost under $1 million to make.

Speaking with Gamasutra, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell attributed Sins' sales success in part to the game's broad-audience system requirements.

"Sins of a Solar Empire was explicitly designed to work on a wide variety of machines," said Wardell. "It will run on a four-year-old video card, and it looks great...You make those kinds of design decisions, and you greatly increase the number of people who can play your game. You lose out on some piddly super-mega effect, but you get those units. The results come in sales."

For more on Ironclad's critically acclaimed interstellar real-time strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire, check out GameSpot's full review.