The whole deal with Brad started to get unpleasant when he announced in 2009 that Stardock was going to boycott UPS after UPS said they didn't want their advertisements run during Glenn Becks show (after Glenn said Obama was a racist who hated white people). Then there was the disaster of Elemental, and finally the allegations of sexual harassment at Stardock.
It's not hard to understand why some people don't want to give them money.
I feel that Stardock has made good on Elemental with free copies of later (better quality) releases in the series to those who preordered the original. As far as I know the Sexual Harassment stuff was never proven, and the UPS fiasco was six years ago. I'm wary of Stardock but don't feel they are worse than EA or Ubisoft.
That said, I will never ever preorder anything from them again!