It's sad that this story has been turned wholly negative. Brad Wardell's intent here was never to bitch about piracy or anything. The story here is that Gas Powered Games was able to quickly and efficiently navigate around a problem they never anticipated to have.

They're not "trying to isolate" the pirates anymore, they already did - more than a day ago.

Sales of the game - they expected to *maybe* have 50,000 peak connections after a *few weeks*. 18,000 on launch day seems like a reasonable number that completely meets their expectations.

I really hope they can shut off the pirates on their pipeline. Furthrer, I hope they could quietly go after them.

Wow! joe c's story perspective really makes it more of a positive thing. WTG joe. As it should be. :) Thumbs up.

You mean Stardock didn't forsee the need to have players use a valid cd key when logging into their online system in the game? This need was demonstrated many years ago with games like Starcraft. Welcome to multiplayer gaming 101 Brad.

Don't be me wrong, I bought the game and I love it, it's super fun. I'm just very frustrated that 4/5 times I can't play with my friend online because there are constant connection problems. The problem here is that your company was unable to build a system that basically imitates what the competitive Warcraft 3 DOTA community already has. Search for list checker and you'll know what I'm talking about. It's basically a hack to make warcraft 3 bnet games run peer to peer. If fans can hack bnet to do it, surely you can make your own game do it. :(

I do give props to Stardock on the quick first update though. The game was unplayable on launch date and the day after they released a patch that allowed me to get in at least a few games (most don't connect though and the whole process is RIDICULOUSLY slow).

Honest question. Has any successful Online PC game ever had a launch not hindered by connectivity issues? I just feel that after every WoW Update and the recent Quake Live fiasco, "unexpected issues" are a common expectation from these kinds of games.

Best of luck to Stardock for getting everything ironed out.

Hey, now that GENUINE maritime tomfoolery is in the news, can we go back to calling GAME pirates what they really are? Crooks?

@David
Warhammer Online was buttery smooth Launch.

Isn't Wardell's stance that if your game treats the customer with respect (through lack of DRM, high quality, etc) then people are less likely to pirate it? Now Demigod has 6x more warez copies than legit copies...

Is this game a counterexample or am I misrepresenting his position?

@Bob...yep that was the plan. I don't know if Wardell actually believed it or it was marketing hype to get publishers/investors on-board. It seem pretty clear it's fail at this point. I think I remember him making fun of the Crytek guy at one point too when everyone was talking about piracy last year. If you're going to imitate Steam, take the good stuff will ya? Let's see if they get that GOO thing up and running too because I have my doubts about that as well.

Pretty sure the basis of his stance is that the people who aren't willing to pay for your game almost certainly won't buy it even if they can't warez it. I've heard sympathisers try to claim that piracy keeps games development honest, that it reduces the likelihood that people will regret buying a game they turn out to hate, but I'm just not convinced of that, I've seen cases of people admitting to downloading a favourite game and its clear they aren't going to pay money for it and thats to say nothing of the vast majority of game pirates who don't spend time on message boards trying to justify they actions because regardless of what terms or definitions people try to apply or disuade from being applied, piracy is still wrong. Whatever helps these guys sleep at night eh?

I've seguewayed a bit there, what I meant to say is that, why trying to use DRM & other measures that'll be harmful to your paying customers even though they don't actually prevent piracy in the long run. DRM providers claim that by using their software you'll prevent day 0 piracy and thus encourage more sales. No one stops to ask the one important question here though: Whats stopping the pirates from just being patient for that extra one or two days/weeks? Its like the ultimate budget release company only instead of paying a mere £10 for what was a £35 retail release, you're getting it for free just by being patient.

That said, there are parts of the world where game prices are unreasonable due to economic conditions and although I don't agree with it, I can understand why these folks would be tempted to do it. If a game is a significant percentage of a weekly wage, thats just not got for mainstream consumption of your game. I'm with Warren Spector on this - Our games are too expensive for a semblance impulse purchasing, the big releases are often purely this because of massive hype buildups designed to build up that impulse buy over time which technically stops it from being an impulse purchase and makes it something else, arguably this could be why hardcore games aren't reaching into the mainstream to a significant degree, because part-time gamers don't have the time to scour games websites for news and thats assuming they'd know what to look forward to in the first place.

Heh, this is getting long so I'll shut up now.

Wait. Are you telling me you don't need an install key to play online? That's idiotic.

Opposing DRM is one thing. Everyone finds it annoying when they can only install their game a limited amount of time. But allowing users to connect to the online servers without a CD key? Is stardock retarded?

@Robert Farr
Part of Wardell's plan was also not to release a game that wasn't working. Gamestop screwed that up and I get the feeling that people are infringing on the game as a "try before you buy" scenario. Not requiring a unique CD key to access online service is foolish though.

Where did you get the idea that pirates could play online? Nonsense.

Read up: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467

OK I read that post and I was wrong in that assumption. From reading the other posts, it seemed like their anti-DRM extended into letting anyone play on their servers - something that would be retarded. It turns out that is not the case. My fault.

Joe C, the article opens with: "Stardock says Gas Powered Games' recently-launched Demigod is struggling severely under the burden of hundreds of thousands of illegitimate users on its online servers."

I'm confused. How is this not saying that pirates are playing online?