Stardock created and maintains WinCustomize, a graphical user interface customization community, and developed the Impulse content delivery system before its sale to GameStop.

Stardock was founded by college student Brad Wardell and named after a major city in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle.

Stardock did not receive the majority of royalties from the initial sales of Galactic Civilizations due to publisher bankruptcy in addition to taking on many of the publisher's responsibilities, 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).

However, they did not make this decision public, and Stardock continued to develop applications software and games for the platform, including Avarice and Entrepreneur.

[3] 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.

The release of Windows XP stimulated sales in Stardock products, and despite growing competition proportional to the market the company remains in a strong position.

[citation needed] In 2010 Q3, Stardock was forced into layoffs due to the unexpectedly poor launch of Elemental: War of Magic.

Components of Object Desktop include WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DeskScapes, DesktopX, Fences and WindowFX, as well as utilities such as Multiplicity and SpaceMonger designed to increase productivity and stability on Windows.

WinCustomize is best known for providing a library of downloadable content, such as skins, themes, icons and wallpapers for the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Stardock found success developing online software subscription services such as Object Desktop for the PC, which allowed them to slowly grow a separate game division.

[13] A successful sequel was self-published by Stardock,[15] allowing them to grow their publishing business for third-party games, including titles such as Sins of a Solar Empire,[16] Demigod,[17] and Ashes of the Singularity.

[18] Having developed Stardock Central to digitally distribute its own PC titles, the company launched a service called Drengin.net in summer 2003.