Demigod Piracy Running High

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
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Demigod Piracy Running High


Gamers have expressed their appreciation and thanks for Demigod [http://www.stardock.com/] to such high levels that the studio's network infrastructure was brought to its knees.

In yesterday's Day One Status Report [http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346815/], Stardock CEO Brad Wardell revealed that the company's network was clobbered by a heavy influx of users anxious to get online with Demigod, the vast majority of whom were running illegitimate copies. "The system works pretty well if you have a few thousand people online at once. The system works... less well if there are tens of thousands of people online at once," he wrote. "And if there are over 100,000 people, well, you get horrific results such as the game being incredibly unresponsive due to simple web service calls that were considered pretty benign during the beta that suddenly start to bring down firewalls and such due to the sheer massive number of calls that are being made."

"Sadly, most of the ~120,000 connections are not customers but via warez," he continued. "About 18,000 are legitimate. So anyway, we spent a lot of time today trying to isolate out the warez users from the legitimate users (it would require a lot of surgery to actually break them and even if we did, there'd be no friendly 'ha ha pirate' message which would result in people just saying the game is buggy)." Wardell said Stardock was trying to "shuffle off the warez users" so legitimate customers will have a better opportunity to connect and play the game.

Along with at least one GPG [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/demigod/review.html] if there were problems with multiplayer," he wrote. "At the time, my worry was about things like disconnects and CVP. It didn't occur to me that we'd have near MMO user connections to throw in."

via: VE3D [http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46194/102-000-Pirates-Overload-Demigods-Online-Infrastructure]


Permalink
 

scarbunny

Beware of geeks bearing gifs.
Aug 11, 2008
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CantFaketheFunk said:
This makes me very, very sad.
Me to.

This is just the fuel DRM companies and advocates need, they can hold Demigod up and say "look no DRM and a piracy rate of around 5 times the purchase rate"

Im not that bothered when things like Spore or Bioshock get ripped off as you end up getting the shitty end of the stick if you buy the game, but when a company is trying to do whats best for the consumer it takes several types of piss.
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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CantFaketheFunk said:
This makes me very, very sad.
No freaking joke!

There goes that 'We pirate to protest' argument.
This is just disgusting.

A good company with respect for the consumer leaves itself open and get slammed because people are selfish pricks.
THIS is why there is DRM.
THIS is why there is copy protection that pisses people off.

Because people are too damn selfish and/or cheap to actually support the companies.

EDIT:
Kangol said:
GOGO PIRATES!
You're a douchebag.
 

BleachedBlind

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May 19, 2008
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It's hard to justify purchasing this game, at least during this stage of its life. First, there is no campaign...at all. That leaves you with skirmishes against AI and playing online. Since I haven't played it, I can't tell you if the old "this is really just meant to be played online only" approach works for it. Aside from the piracy problem, it is my understanding that they set up a P2P system that's largely dysfunctional.

I'm not advocating its piracy, but I think it is a little short of being ready for sale at this stage. Adding in a campaign for proper single player, fixing the online setup, or pumping out some extra content would help right now. They should have just hosted servers and required a CD Key like every other smart company ever.
 

oneplus999

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Oct 4, 2007
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This game was so bland, I really don't mind seeing it fail. If you have any interest whatsoever in this type of game, go play DotA instead (get wc3 and the expansion back for like $30) or, if you don't like DotA, wait for League of Legends.
 

cainx10a

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May 17, 2008
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I think it's about time Developers think of a new way to hinder piracy without affecting their honest customers.


Bring out the MMO-tactics, meaning having to stay online/connected to actually play a game. A log-in interface to their network to be able to access and play the game content; you probably shouldn't be able to stay online to be able to play the game, but you still need to validate your account with the system to get access to the game itself.
 

MaxFan

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Nov 15, 2008
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I think lots of people are missing the point. How many of the pirate copies would actually ever become legit copies if there was DRM? I'm betting very few, they'd just break the DRM first.
 

Taawus

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Oct 21, 2008
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Pirating it? Okay, not nice but i could live with that.
Clogging up the networks and not letting people who actually bought it not being able to play online? Now thats being a grade A asshole.
 

Leroy Frederick

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Jan 27, 2009
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Even if assuming the game's shit (or lacks content or whatever other excuse), this still sucks and isn't good for the DRM free advocates.

A simply online check for allowing access to legit customers only would have be wise though, but that ratio is ridiculous!
 

DaxStrife

Late Reviewer
Nov 29, 2007
657
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I'd like to think this was one of those instances of piracy where people want to try the game before buying it. That's probably just my little shreds of optimism, but there wasn't any demo for this game... pirates sometimes will steal a game just to see if it's worth the money.
 

Doug

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Apr 23, 2008
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scarbunny said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
This makes me very, very sad.
Me to.

This is just the fuel DRM companies and advocates need, they can hold Demigod up and say "look no DRM and a piracy rate of around 5 times the purchase rate"

Im not that bothered when things like Spore or Bioshock get ripped off as you end up getting the shitty end of the stick if you buy the game, but when a company is trying to do whats best for the consumer it takes several types of piss.
Agreed. Bloody pirates.
 

Royas

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Apr 25, 2008
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I'd be curious as to how bad the piracy would be if it had DRM like EA and Atari have been using. I'd bet it would be at similar levels, but there is just no way to test that. Regardless, pirating something like this, where the publisher is trying to be fair to the customer, is so wrong I can't even find the words for it. Jackasses.
 

scotth266

Wait when did I get a sub
Jan 10, 2009
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This is annoying as hell to read. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS!!! These folks have gladly given their product out free of DRM in order to support the gaming public's protest against the system, and what do all these people do? They pirate it! This also happened to the guy that made World of Goo. A 90% piracy rate on that game, but the man still says that he hates DRM.

Shelling out money to the people that DON'T have DRM is the only way to get rid of it. Pirating Spore is acceptable in my mind, but this? This is an outrage. Anyone who pirated this, please turn in your testicles, along with all cred you possess as a gamer. You clearly deserve neither.

The point isn't how good the game is, but the company's stand on DRM. And I don't need to hear more people parroting "DOTA DOTA DOTA". Who cares about DOTA when Blizzard makes tons of money all the time? As a gaming public against DRM, we need to support companies with like ideals.

EDIT: Apologies for sounding all pissy. It's just that DRM invokes the worst rage in me that you can get.
 

Anton P. Nym

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Sep 18, 2007
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I'm not going to point to this as a reason to get DRM, but I will point to it to shoot down all those high-and-mighty claims about piracy being ethical and harmless... certainly it knocks giant holes in the argument that removing DRM would reduce piracy.

-- Steve