By Alec Meer on April 18th, 2009 at 2:01 pm.
As Jim alluded to in the comments thread for our Demigod discussion last week, one of the many interesting issues around writing for the web instead of for print is that a verdict passed on a game doesn’t have to stay static in the event that game’s problems improve/worsen. Demigod’s a fine example – if one of us had written it up on compressed tree-matter and shoved a number at the end, that number would reflect its enormous netcode screw-ups, and would sit as a faintly damning judgement upon it for all time (of course, damnable parasite-site Metacritic means that problem still exists for a lot of web stuff too).
While releasing a game that was problem-riddled in the first place is scarcely something that should be condoned, as GPG and Stardock (I’m becoming increasingly confused as to who’s really in charge of DG now) have been frantically racing to patch the thing up over the last week, such a judgement would already have been innacurate. Especially as it appears – oh dear – piracy may have significantly exacerbated DG’s multiplayer problems….
According to one of Stardock’s ongoing status reports about Demigod, “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. 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. About 18,000 are legitimate.”
A result, it seems of Gamestop breaking Demigod’s street date early, and the DRM-free game rapidly showing up on slew of Torrent sites. Do bear in mind that copies without a valid serial number can’t actually play online, but that doesn’t stop them trying, attempting to download patches or the game polling them. And that’s key – every copy of Demigod, legit or otherwise, phones home – apparently as an update check. If that check wasn’t in there, apparently, the servers wouldn’t have been struggling so. So while the amount of pirated copies is causing the multiplayer problems, those problems mightn’t exist if Stardock/GPG hadn’t put that check in. That is, of course, presuming you take Stardock at their word as to why Demigod’s multiplayer was so torturous at release.
In a follow-up status report, we got more details:
The issue boiled down to us having put together a multiplayer infrastructure that was designed to handle around 50,000 or so connected users. If the game took off, we would simply add more servers as the load increased.
But what happened was that we ended up with 140,000 connected users, of which about 12% were actually legitimate customers. Now, the roughly 120,000 users that weren’t running legitimate copies of the game weren’t online playing multiplayer or anything. The issue with those users was as benign as a handful of HTTP calls that did things like check for updates and general server keep alive. Pretty trivial on its own until you have 120,000 of them. Then you have what amounts to a DDOS attack on yourself.
So the day 2 update we released basically made sure legitimate customers were no longer being affected by those users. As a side note, no we can’t just eliminate the infrastructure being used up by warez users because they’re running the unprotected retail version and we can’t make a distinction between retail and pirated since there’s no copy protection. It’s not a huge deal in the long run (except to our metacritic score), it was just an unexpected challenge that made day 1 a very bad multiplayer experience.
Another interesting element in the web vs print argy-bargy is that we now get this kind of transparency from developers/publishers – immediate word on exactly what’s happening with a troubled game, which can appease fans. Of course, the relies on the publisher/developer being prepared to be open and honest, rather than the cold, closed ranks and dismissive attitudes towards fans some outfits demonstrate.
Anyway, there’s King Fact – around 12% of Demigod’s first-week players were legitimate. As always, that doesn’t mean the other 88% are lost customers, but it’s forever startling to see these kind of numbers. More important, really, is the experience the genuine customers are having – have the couple of patches since launch fixed the multiplayer problems? What say you, faithful types? After a couple of days on the road I’ve not been able to stick my head in just yet, but hopefully it means Jim’s forthcoming full Wot I Think is finally all engines go…
While clearly piracy is the flashpoint to end all flashpoints on this site, do be grown-ups and human beings as you debate this in comments.
Oh, and if you want the more personal touch, here’s Stardock’s Brad Wardell recording a video diary for IGN wherein he looks into and explains the launch problems:
18/04/2009 at 14:08 verspunken says:
No, the patches haven’t fixed multiplayer completely. In fact the NAT server has been down for the last 9 hours or so, so there are no games at all. A few people have resorted to using Hamachi and other lan emulators to get around the network problems, to varying degrees of success.
It is an awesome game when you actually get to play – just completely borked at present.
18/04/2009 at 14:15 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I’m sure a lot of people who are pirating would say they are ‘just trying it out’.. but isn’t that why there are demos? Now, I’m not sure if there is a demigod demo, but I suspect (not verified by facts, just my thought) in such a situation a pretty large percentage will keep on playing the game for a decent amount of time using the pirated version. A similar large group will discard it after a short while, and a smaller group will actually go out and purchase.
I see it all the time.. whether it be movies, music or games, when people can easily get things for free a lot of people will have no compunctions about taking part in piracy. And will often discard any notions about it having a serious impact and that they buy the things they really value.
Bleh. Sorry, I didn’t intend for this to turn into a piracy debate.
18/04/2009 at 14:17 Morberis says:
I’m going to say “kinda’. You can now fairly painlessly get into a match with strangers. A pre-arranged group on the other hand is another story. Usually what seems to happen there is people can get into the lobby – so they’ve connected with everyone – but once they get there they either aren’t connected to someone or their ping to that person is 0. All of which means you can’t start the match until they leave, rejoin, and check to see if they are connected again. If not you can try changing hosts be remaking the game and then you rinse and repeat.
However Brad Wardell has a post (link below) saying that they have know about the problem and they’ll try to have a patch out in a few days. He also talks about the remaining issues people are having with the game.
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467
18/04/2009 at 14:21 Morberis says:
Update!
You can also use Demigod with the excellent 4d party game matching service “Game Ranger” which should eliminate alot of the networking problems from what I’m hearing. We’ll see.
18/04/2009 at 14:23 BooleanBob says:
Inb4 piracy threadwar. Ugh, the day I start slipping chanisms into everyday conversation is the day I learn how to tie a noose.
That said, I would like to see how Randall (to select a strawman figurehead at pretty much random) and his anti-copyright/pro-piracy gang struggle to justify such behaviour in light of this kind of ‘no-win’ scenario where everyone gets screwed over. Not just the devs, not just paying customers, but even – gasp! – those [people - edit it back to flame-starting again and the whole comment gets wiped - RPS] who’ll argue ’til they’re blue in the face that there’s nothing immoral about their gratis fuckoff software library because you can’t prove it translates to lost sales.
18/04/2009 at 14:25 Heliocentric says:
The percentage of pirates would be lower with a release day demo. The demo could have been single player only.
Just sayin.
18/04/2009 at 14:26 Senethro says:
Ah, pirates damage a service they’re not entitled to use through insufficient security.
Perhaps DRM can be a good thing?
18/04/2009 at 14:26 Lobotomist says:
Yes. Lets blame it on piracy again.
“We can handle people playing online. But we can not handle clients pinging (once) to see if there is an update.”
Damn those pirates
18/04/2009 at 14:27 [I promise not to link to warez sites in my username anymore] says:
Ok you all need to get this straight. Pirates are not able to play legit online. This is all because Stardock is querying everybody when they simply execute the game, for updates and whatnot. It’s their own fault! Kind of annoyed at how every blog in the land is so ignorant! I mean seriously, I wouldn’t be here right now if I could play legit Demigod. No. I have to buy the goddam thing… Buy demigod or save for better hardware so I can buy red faction guerrilla. Oh the dilemma !
18/04/2009 at 14:29 Morberis says:
3rd*
18/04/2009 at 14:36 cowthief skank says:
Regardless of whether the pirates can actually play a game or not the numbers are pretty damning.
18/04/2009 at 14:38 BooleanBob says:
I am editing this expression of remorse in an attempt to reassert my control over the situation. I am unsure as to whether I have learned anything.
18/04/2009 at 14:43 dsmart says:
This is yet another classic example of why – all these years – most people with two brain cells have pretty much ignored Brad’s “NO DRM” ramblings.
Don’t get me wrong, as a dev, I can appreciate the notion of always trying to be one step ahead of the game but the fact is that most people in general are inherently bad and cannot be trusted. Period. End of story.
That said, to assume that a “no DRM” (which is bullshit and a misnomer to boot) mantra is going to change or do anything is the sort of naive thinking that does nothing but treat gamers like idiots.
Impulse (and their first failed attempt, TotalGaming.net) uses DRM. No matter how u slice or dice it. If the game – out of the box – or in ESD (Electronic Service Distribution) form requires ANY sort of authentication, thats what DRM (Digital Rights Management) means.
Most people lapping up this shit, have no farking clue what DRM even means. So in between the mouth frothing about DRM, everyone thinks if its not SecuROM, Starforce, SafeDisc or Tages, then its not DRM. What utter bullshit.
Now you have a case where – once again – DRM (Impulse Driven) has deprived legit PC gamers from enjoying their product to the full extent of what they paid for.
But the argument would have ended there if it was all about pirates bringing the network down. However, it doesn’t. The netcode in Demigods is still the same half-baked rubbish GPG have had in ALL their games. Regardless of who wrote it, a P2P network will not work for most games, even if the intent is to cut down on bandwidth. In this day and age of broadband, why would even bother about bandwidth for a game that only allows a VERY SMALL number of clients in multiplayer, is beyond me. Thats why – the rest of us out here – go with a pure UDP (with “guaranteed send” flags) client/server architecture which is more robust and fault tolerant.
Yes, the game is going to fail to meet expectations, not because of pirates, netcode or anything – but because in general, GPG games are lifeless, souless repetitive stress inducing lessons in hype, flash and emptiness. My guess is you will never – ever – see Brad come out in a few months and sing the praises of it selling 500K units because they don’t use DRM. Mark my words.
The reasons that SiNS did so well – for an indie product – is because the game was well put together, patently flawless in its execution and was dirt cheap to make. Also, at the time of release, there was a dearth of those type of space RTS games – and which have been missing in the market (Space Siege was rubbish. Which is one of the reasons why it failed) for so long. So amidst all the clones and crappy releases, SiNs was well timed. Comparing SiNs to DG is like comparing GTAIV to Saints Row 2. I think.
If PC gaming is to continue, we need some form of non-intrusive, gamer friendly DRM.
PC gaming at retail is as good as dead. Heck, even the retailers are now saying that if a PC game is prices more than $19.99, then it had better have one helluva marketing expense behind it. Then, like with Target, you have to PAY for shelf space in EACH store that you want the title to be sold in.
Further, the retailers (of which there are only four main ones left here in the US) are pretty much over and done with PC games because there is no resale value in it and thus no money in it for them when compared to the killing they make on console games. Heck get this, Best Buy is now requiring a piece of the action for any PC product with a subscription. Why? Because they want to own that customer. Which is why you no longer see the likes of McAfee in there. And before long, others will follow suit. Retailers are getting greedy and desperate and the extortionist type antics are getting even more creative as each day goes by. Why? Because they’re all freaking out over ESD in the software space. Plus, they can get away with it because as it stands, retail space still beats ESD for certain markets. But not for long.
So ESD is going to be the only place to find PC games in the coming years. Which is why ESD is booming now. And with that, all the more reason to have a robust DRM scheme in place because as with all digital goods, if people can steal it – from the comfort of their homes – they will.
18/04/2009 at 14:55 Garg says:
I hope they sort out the problems with Demigod; it looks stompy, and thus great. And the multiplayer in Demigod still sounds a hell of a lot better than the inbuilt Gamespy crap that was in the original Dawn of War.
18/04/2009 at 15:03 Stuk says:
Fantastic comment Derek, and I agree with pretty much all of it (although the “most people in general are inherently bad and cannot be trusted” is quite hard to swallow. I think this applies to internet, where people are mostly just aliases, but hopefully not so much in the “real world”).
While, until recently, I’ve been thinking that DRM is bad, there is no doubt that there has to be something to stop those damn dirty pirates.
18/04/2009 at 15:04 RPS says:
Deletotron has feasted a few times in this thread already. Be gentlemen, gentlemen.
18/04/2009 at 15:04 Zarniwoop says:
The only form of DRM which has ever ‘worked’ to any degree is Steam. Devise a way of accurately measuring the piracy of YOUR game when it is released, and then say all that.
18/04/2009 at 15:07 Gorgeras says:
No, most people ignored his ramblings because they just wanted to. The excuses come afterwards.
The problem was there has been no demo.
There has been no demo because of an unexpected early release.
This was caused by Gamestop being tarded.
See how simple that is? The only reason to perform mental gymnastics over this is to find an excuse to justify a presupposed point of view.
And isn’t some “non-intrusive, gamer friendly DRM” exactly what Stardock has actually called for? The only context in which I’ve heard “No DRM” is something like “Either make DRM friendly or don’t have it at all”.
18/04/2009 at 15:10 Nick says:
Deletotron should take a look at NuZZ’s name link.
18/04/2009 at 15:13 jalf says:
But demos often aren’t representative. This isn’t an argument for or against piracy as “trying it out”, but simply an observation. A demo often doesn’t tell us anything about the game. ETW’s demo consisted of two predesigned battles. The campaign, which is what makes the series unique, was just not there.
The DoW2 demo does not feature multiplayer *or* coop. What’s the point then? Yes, the singleplayer campaign is still good fun, but they’re hiding the *real* reasons why the game stands out.
If I didn’t already own both of these games, if I wanted to check them out, the demos would probably not have got me hooked. But if I’d pirated them, I’d have gotten to see how fun both games actually are. Actually, that’s how I got into the TW games in the first place. I downloaded MTW “just to check it out”, and….. played it nonstop for the next month. Then I went out to buy it, and played it nonstop for another 2 months…… ;)
I’ll probably get flamed for bringing it up again, but Braid’s demo is another example. As amazing as the game probably is, the demo gives the impression of a fairly standard platformer, with stiff writing, and a pretty tame gameplay gimmick thrown in.
You are right, “trying it out” is what demos are for. But unfortunately, they often don’t do a very good job of it, and piracy may (from the consumer’s point of view, at least) solve the problem much better.
Now, about Demigod, one thing I want to point out here is that Stardock dropped the ball. Querying for authorization and patching should not go to the same servers that handle the actual game. By apparently melding everything together on the server-side, they *allow* pirates who are basically just pinging for the latest patch, to bring down the whole thing. That is simply dumb. Of course it wouldn’t have been an issue if the game hadn’t been pirated, but it shouldn’t have been an issue in any case. At worst, it should have killed the patching/authorization servers, but never ever the actual game servers.
And finally, there’s no reason to suspect that adding (regular) DRM would have changed anything. It just has to be cracked once, remember? If so many people wanted to play the game for free, they’d have done so. (Of course, technically, there is DRM in Demigod. They were able to detect pirates and prevent them from playing, after all)
@BooleanBob: Strawman indeed. Randall, XKCD or anyone else who despise DRM have nothing to do with this debacle, *nor* does he or other anti-DRM people claim that “there is nothing wrong with pirating software”. I’m glad you admitted it’s a strawman.
18/04/2009 at 15:22 Frosty840 says:
I have to agree with Derek, here, to some extent. If Impulse are claiming on the one hand that there’s “no DRM” and on the other that they able to prevent over 100,000 people from playing the game (100,000 pirates yes, but that’s the point), then there’s Digital Rights Management in the game. The “rights” of the pirates to play the game have been “digitally managed” into the “off” position. That they didn’t purchase said rights in the first place is immaterial to the fact that their rights have been managed… digitally…
I still have problems with various brands of DRM, because frankly all Starforce does is prevent my PC from reading the goddamn discs at all. The drive shows up as being empty, I usually manage to install Starforce-”protected” software by setting up another PC’s DVD drive as a shared folder and installing from there. And because the disc won’t register as being physically present in the PC, I end up cracking the software anyway, once I’ve gone through all that idiocy to get it onto the PC at all.
No benefit to the customer, no benefit to the publisher, all benefit to Starforce, who get paid to ship broken product.
Didn’t really have anywhere to go with this comment, so I’ll stop.
18/04/2009 at 15:27 (fish) says:
For anyone who cares, hamachi seems to play the game quite well. I havent tried the gameranger thing but i hear people are getting good results with that too.
18/04/2009 at 15:28 kr8 says:
I agree with dsmart except about everything he said about DRM. You’ll never win customers by screwing over your customers. Steam is about the worst they’re willing to accept and personally I’m still hoping politicians will fill in some of the gaps for me (no resale/transfer of games? wtf is that about?).
But anyway, the “wow huge piracy” people are forgetting that the game wasn’t out yet. People who read online it got leaked probably flocked to it in droves, causing a fairly big number skew. It’d be interesting to see what the numbers are in 6 months though.
18/04/2009 at 15:34 Hoernchen says:
I’m sure it was completely impossible to anticipate piracy. Doh.
It completely eludes me how piracy is supposed to affect a “multiplayer only” game like Demigod, there is about as much singleplayer content as in Battlefield 1942/2 so people who actually want to play it will have to buy it anyway. Oh, wait, except in the case of insufficient server capacity to be able to handle all the pirates which were coerced into downloading the game by the promise of incredible singleplayer content.
18/04/2009 at 15:41 Steve says:
The description of how they managed to essentially cripple their own servers through horrible decisions seems like a remarkable act of stupidity. Hopefully it’ll be fully sorted soon, was giving some thought to picking this up.
As for PC games going digital only, I really hope that never happens. I like having a box on my shelf with an honest-to-goodness manual and disc in. Although the shelf space I need now is getting a bit excessive.
18/04/2009 at 15:44 c-Row says:
Subsciption-based games? I don’t think WOW or Eve Online suffer from piracy that much, or at least it’s numbers are insignificant compared to the amount of willing-to-pay customers.
18/04/2009 at 15:47 bansama says:
I’m still waiting for a demo for this game before passing any judgment on it. Especially having read about the problems with Comodo. I certainly won’t drop 4000+ yen down on it until I know for sure that I won’t have to cripple features of Comodo I’d rather have running.
18/04/2009 at 15:48 jackflash says:
Come on, people. This whole “there was no demo so I had to get the warez copy” argument is disingenuous at best. I’m so tired of it being shoveled like shit over and over again on every gaming forum.
Have you not heard of the amazing concept of “waiting”? That is, you do not play the game until there is a demo available? It’s new, and hot off the presses, I know, but try it! Be inconvenienced for a few weeks. Go get a job so you don’t have to bitch and moan about spending $40 – ($40! This hasn’t been a significant amount of money since I was 12!) – on a computer game. If that’s too hard for you, go flirt with a girl and give up a pastime it appears you can’t afford.
And the lack of a demo had nothing to do with Gamestop’s early release. The release came a weekend early. Stardock has been clear that there wouldn’t be a demo until a few weeks after release. It was the same with Sins. They don’t have the resources to finish the game and cut it up into a demo at the same time. Either buy it based on your faith in the developer and the early reviews (as I did with Sins) or wait to try it on the demo. This whole “it’s Stardock’s fault for not having a demo, they MAAADE me do it!” is utter bullshit and you know it.
18/04/2009 at 15:50 Theory says:
So, anyone seen a “Lack of DRM brings down Stardock game” headline yet?
(also, how exactly did they resolve this situation if they can’t tell pirates’ requests from buyers’?)
18/04/2009 at 15:50 jalf says:
@jackflash: Who in this thread said “there was no demo so I had to get the warez copy”?
18/04/2009 at 15:51 Senethro says:
Now heres something you rarely hear about. How do prices in yen for retail and downloads compare to dollars? Do you get better or worse deals than Europe?
18/04/2009 at 15:52 jackflash says:
@Hoernchen :
“Oh, wait, except in the case of insufficient server capacity to be able to handle all the pirates which were coerced into downloading the game by the promise of incredible singleplayer content.”
Do you have any idea how silly this sounds? You’re talking about the producer of a product *coercing* somebody into stealing their game by saying it’s good? Oh I keep forgetting – the pirates are the victims, here.
18/04/2009 at 15:55 c-Row says:
*waits for links to Fallout 3 and GTA IV demos*
18/04/2009 at 15:57 blacktick says:
@ Stuk
No,most people in general are evil(requires definition though) and cannot be trusted,that doesn’t apply just the internet.
It’s a cynical but a realistic approach to life,never trust anyone you don’t know. :)
@ dsmart
Very good post indeed. :)
This whole demigod discussion got out of hand. the 100 000 “pirates” were non updated and pirated versions pinging simulatinously as I gathered.
Plus it’s only been few weeks,the industry and media expecting game to sell hundeads of thousands to millions in the first week or so is unrealistic unless the game is hyped to death like gta or some other franchise.
@ Jackflash
And do you know how impatient people are? everything must be now and they only wait if there is no other choice or their financial situation doesn’t allow any more spending.
I wouldn’t actually pay more than 20-30 USD/euros for games these days anyway. 40(52 USD) € is asking too much and here 50 € is a total f*cking rip off. luckily there is play.com and weekend deals on GG and steam.
18/04/2009 at 15:58 Psychopomp says:
@NuZZ
We might listen to you, if you had made the mistake of leaving that link on your name.
18/04/2009 at 15:59 Tei says:
LIES
The game netcode was this bad in beta.
18/04/2009 at 16:06 bansama says:
Come on, people. This whole “there was no demo so I had to get the warez copy” argument is disingenuous at best. I’m so tired of it being shoveled like shit over and over again on every gaming forum.
As much as you, I and probably most others hate it, pirates just love to justify their illegal actions however they can. Such as, “I pirated it because I hate the DRM”, “I pirated it because I hate the publisher/developer”, “I pirated it because I can’t afford to buy it (but I deserve to play it right now!!!)” and so on.
They simply cannot face up to the very truth of the matter – they pirated it for no other reason than they wanted to get it for free.
As far as the claim of pirating a game because there is no demo, people obviously do it. Taking the case of Defense Grid, once they got their demo out, they did see a drop in the amount of piracy (although how they monitored the rate is unknown). So perhaps there is some truth in the belief that getting a day 0 demo (or even pre-release demo) out there can help cut down on piracy.
What I would really like to see though, is a real full scale independent study into the ACTUAL affects of piracy. But what are the chances of such study being performed? Probably about the same as all pirates suddenly stopping what they do simultaneously. Ah well, we can but dream.
18/04/2009 at 16:07 chequers says:
I think stardock will do what they always do and after a few weeks and some patches the most painful issues with this game will be fixed.
However, the fact they have chosen to go with UDP P2P tech instead of client/server like other games means there will be a significant (10%? 25%?) proportion of people who want to play who will just never be able to. There will be some proportion of people who even the best NAT traversal will fail for, and some proportion of those won’t be capable of port forwarding manually.
For a game that’s basically 100% multiplayer (like q3) that worries me a lot.
18/04/2009 at 16:09 dsmart says:
No, its not simple. Its rubbish. Simply.
1. Not having a demo is not an excuse to pirate a game, just to have a look see
2. The Gamestop street date makes NO difference to the state of a demo. You don’t throw a demo together in a matter of days. Are you KIDDING me?
3. If there is a key required – whether offline or online – it is a form of DRM. What has happened in this DG case is that this “DRM” has – just like SecuROM, Tages, Starforce etc – deprived legit gamers from using the product they PAID for.
Stardock has been doing online authentication products for DECADES. Going all the way back to the OS2 days. So this is not some revelation that if you made a stupid decision that its going to come back an bite you in the ass.
And this thing about NAT and DSL? Rubbish. Any half-wit network programmers knows how to get around it. No need to mess with routers, port forwarding or anything like that.
There are people even on Hamachi, Leaf and Game Ranger, having netcode problems still. That has nothing to do with DRM.
Plus, now that the pirates have figured out that they can actually play multiplayer without going through Stardock’s auth network, it goes downhill from here. So of course things are going to pick up on their network now that the pirates have gone off an found alternate forms of playing online. So much for that.
The end result is that a “No DRM” game would not have required ANY authentication whatsoever. And as such, this problem would NEVER have happened in
the first place.
Yes. Lots. Try Google.
18/04/2009 at 16:11 DK says:
Aren’t you forgetting the bigger issue here? The new-age software pirates should find themselves a new name, since the real nautical pirates are back in business. Where’s your peglegs and parrots, software-would-be-pirates?
18/04/2009 at 16:11 Tei says:
“There will be some proportion of people who even the best NAT traversal will fail for, and some proportion of those won’t be capable of port forwarding manually.”
Interesting!!! What ports need this game? I would love to add then to my firewall.
18/04/2009 at 16:11 root says:
I think Hmm-Hmm (at the top) has the right idea.
This game was built and released with the understanding that it would be widely pirated. Instead of impotently attempting to stop it, they embraced it and are using it to their advantage.
The people that torrented the game, and like it, will buy it for the online play and the DLC, the others will be content to play vs. AI or uninstall.
18/04/2009 at 16:15 Rei Onryou says:
A Demigod demo could’ve been easily released. You take 1 Assassin demigod, 1 General demigod and 2 levels (a 1vs1 and a 3vs3). The levels can be played singleplayer (campaign or skirmish, I don’t even think it matters) and multiplayer. The long term perk system is disabled for demo users.
All that stuff already exists for a demo. A day 0 demo would have at least given them an idea of server requirements so they could ramp it up for release if needed.
The least they could do now is sue GameStop for making the situation so apparent. There would’ve been net code issues and rampant piracy anyway, but they may as well pass off some of the blame. They had to work on the Easter weekend fer crikes sake!
18/04/2009 at 16:17 joe says:
i always pirate every game and play it for 5 minutes to 2 hours to see if it’s worth buying. if i can tell it’s good i go ahead and buy it. more often it’s immediately obvious that it’s not for me and i saved $50 (HAWX was a good example of this).
i did download a pirate copy of DG but i could tell right away it was a good game. i will be buying demigod.
18/04/2009 at 16:22 Tei says:
I see some erroneous comments on this thread.
First DRM !== copy protection. A DRM system is a tool to extend the control of the author over the product, removing freedom from the owner of the copy. A copy protection system, is just a system to make a copy limited to one user, and stop him from making copys that work for other people.
DRM is ethically bad, Copy Protection is OK (other than backup copies.. that is a problem)
Limiting the creating of copys of a product is just ONE of the much things you can do with DRM.
2TH: The “DRM” that today games include, is designed to stop casual piracy, people that make a copy for brothers or friends. It don’t stop hardcore pirates…. hours of days before release, any game with or withouth “DRM” is on the warez sites. “DRM” can’t stop a game from having “100.000″ copys everywhere, because a game with DRM will be hacked and put on the warez networks.
We can’t stop piracy. Is something imposible in a digital world. We have to live with it. People that want to pay for games (like I do) will buy then, and other people will just piracy it. You can’t make the freebies to buy the game. Not all, all least, thats a pipe dream. A demo will probably make some buyers stay away from your game, and get others, If your game suck, It will make more stay away than come.
(note: I hate that my english is soo horrible bad)
18/04/2009 at 16:22 Larington says:
“most people in general are inherently bad and cannot be trusted”
Yeah, around 90 percent of them, give or take 5%. I feel proud to call myself one of the 10%.
Also, please-god-don’t-let-the-OnLive-business-model-takeover. Doesn’t surprise me that retail would be getting more desparate, they are facing the threat of having to re-invent their business model due to the take-over of new distribution systems… Fear is driving them to acts that will alienate development & publishing sides of the industry.
18/04/2009 at 16:25 Ging says:
@Theory: Players without valid serial keys cannot get updates, so they’ve released an update that makes valid clients use a different set of servers for update checks and the like. Pirated (and non-updated) versions are reduced to all using a single server that doesn’t push updates or provide anything else.
18/04/2009 at 16:25 Theory says:
You mean just like every other SP+MP game ever made?
I really don’t follow your argument.
18/04/2009 at 16:26 Xercies says:
@c-Row
They work for MMOs, but try making people pay monthly for a singleplayer game and you’ll have a riot on your hands. And also even some people don’t like paying monthly for MMOs so I don’t think it will work to be honest. But it probably would stop piracy.
18/04/2009 at 16:27 Larington says:
I’m not so worried about the people who are willing to come onto message boards/the open and say they pirate games to try them and can honestly claim they pick up the games they really like.
I’m far more concerned about the silent majority, who don’t care what people think and don’t feel the need to justify their actions, nor even consider the idea of visiting message boards and discovering the level of disgust at their behaviour. These are the people who are most harmful to the industry, they take and take and take and don’t even consider paying for what they’ve taken. They don’t buy games even if they absolutely love to, because they don’t have to pay for them, so they won’t.
18/04/2009 at 16:31 Psychopomp says:
The devs didn’t just work Easter weekend. From release, to a few days ago, the devs were up till AT LEAST 3AM trying to get everything fixed; in addition to being in the Impulse chat channels getting specifics from/to us.
18/04/2009 at 16:37 Tei says:
@Ging: Nah.. I don’t think thats feasible for one thing: What about of box versions? these people with DVD’s will lost the ability to update his game.
18/04/2009 at 16:46 dsmart says:
Yes. And?
Most of us do it. Birthdays. Weekends. Hannukah. Easter. Christmas Day. MLK day. Every day.
So wot? Send them a box of cigars for working around the clock to fix a game they flat out broke due to stupid decisions? Really?
18/04/2009 at 16:47 Gorgeras says:
We’re all missing the point here.
The Unclean Beast is clearly innuendo and should make the game 18+
18/04/2009 at 16:49 malkav11 says:
A demo helps make the decision as to whether a game is worth one’s money. If Demigod had had a pre-release demo, or a day 1 demo, I have no doubt there would have been less pirating of it. Much less? Beats me. Frankly, demos help make the decision, but having access to the entire, uncrippled game provides a lot more information to make that decision on.
Unfortunately, it also tends to skew it towards “don’t buy”, because most of the time the main difference between using your pirated version and a legitimately purchased version is feeling better about yourself in the morning when you opt for the latter.
No one is claiming a demo -must- be released, or that people are forced into piracy by…well, any decision the publisher and developer make (save perhaps ones that render purchase impossible, or the occasional completely broken DRM software). But I know I for one have no desire whatsoever to drop more than about 10-15 bucks on an unknown quantity, gamingwise, and certainly not $40-60 as usually required. This has made Gamefly invaluable, and I continue to wish a similar rental option were available for PC titles.
And for what it’s worth, Demigod is not a singleplayer game. You can play multiplayer against the AI, but that’s hardly the same thing.
18/04/2009 at 17:00 bansama says:
The devs didn’t just work Easter weekend. From release, to a few days ago, the devs were up till AT LEAST 3AM
That’s pretty much a normal working day for me, 10am to 3am — if I’m lucky, this last week I’ve been working far more. So I really don’t have any sympathy for the devs having to do that as a one off.
18/04/2009 at 17:02 Ecko says:
In my vain opinion, you’re truly delusional if you think that no DRM is a viable business model.
Stealing is stealing, pirating games with DRM on is not some kind of noble action, for the greater good to promote a consumer’s nirvana. We few on here may honestly believe DRM is a great evil and piracy to check a game has its purpose, but for the masses, they just download it and play, don’t fool yourself otherwise.
18/04/2009 at 17:22 catska says:
And once again dsmart starts dropping massive truth bombs all over RPS’s face.
But of course here come the evangelists to downplay piracy and try and push the blame onto something else. 12% of 140,000 people are playing legitimate copies and people here have the nerve to blame Gamestop and the lack of a demo? Are you kidding me?
The sooner you all realize piracy is a plague upon PC gaming the better. Developers have been fighting this war for years while the people that should be on their side (the gamers) side with basement dwelling losers who crack games for fun.
Its readily apparent even in the writing of this news article compared to other sources on the web that people here want to try and shrug off piracy and act like its not a problem. Unfortunately what you want to be true isn’t reality.
Stardock’s always had DRM in their software, Impulse is just another form of DRM just like steam. The difference is most people were stupid enough to buy into their ‘We’re on your side, please don’t steal our games!’ marketing with the Gamers bill of Rights garbage and no-DRM marketing.
Clearly that has failed. PC games needs a solution or its on the fast track to mmorpg-ville.
18/04/2009 at 17:38 pepper says:
Piracy, its here to stay. I find these numbers not even shocking anymore. And 80% seems like a statement that can be applied to most games. Still the industry is growing and i know a lot of people that pirate games, but also buy it if they think its worth there money. Although i think you should just wait until it reaches a price you think is worth(not 60 euro, common for now games nowadays).
18/04/2009 at 17:39 blacktick says:
@ catska
And you didn’t bother reading the ACTUAL dev post of which this all escalated from. That’s nothing new…you believe everything you read from the internet.
12% of 140 000 CONCURRENT users were using the updated version and the rest were pirated or non updated(but legit) versions to ping servers.
Those figures don’t tell ANYTHING of actual sales. Just look at kotaku or any other site that posted the “100 k pirates vs 18 k legit” news…they have updated it with the actual story.
No sane person buys a pig in a poke(like you brits say)…so actually seeing what you buy makes perfect sense. no trailers or previews give you a complete picture,demos might.
I’m not saying piracy doesn’t hurt,but it is way over exaggerated just to get some headlines and attention.
You could even say it’s a sort of advert for the game…who knows if those numbers are real. think about it. ;)
18/04/2009 at 18:02 thegrinner says:
I’ve found the multiplayer to be getting MUCH more responsive. It’s still a challenge to find and join a Pantheon game, but it’s gone from never (the first day I played) to an hour down to maybe fifteen minutes. Not good, but considering they’ve had to pull together a ton of extra server power and how transparent they’ve been I’m willing to deal.
18/04/2009 at 18:04 Rich_P says:
@DerekSmart: During a talk at GDC, Wardell called CompUSA a bunch of “bastards” because they demanded that you pay for shelf space. Guess they aren’t the only retailer who does that.
Plus, they can get away with it because as it stands, retail space still beats ESD for certain markets.
Who crosses the Rubicon first? When it comes to newish games, retail is almost always cheaper than DD (just ask European customers). Why buy digitally when you can save 25-35% by purchasing a physical copy?
Also: like I said in the forums, 18k concurrent connections is pretty good. At release, E:TW peaked at maybe 40k concurrent connections. L4D has sold millions of copies, but peaks at 20k concurrent users.
Would something like Steamworks have prevented this? The game stays encrypted until the official release date, at which point Steam decrypts the game files. So even if someone leaks a copy before release, it should be unplayable.
18/04/2009 at 18:47 Hoernchen says:
The saddest part is that so many people were stupid enough to pirate a game only to find out that there is no singleplayer content. http://forums.demigodthegame.com/313497 my ass.
18/04/2009 at 18:49 j c says:
dsmart, I don’t see why you think you’re in any position whatsoever to comment on the game’s sales.
Their planned capacity amounted to roughly 50,000 simultaneous connections in the first few weeks. 18,000 legitimate simultaneous connections on the first day seems awfully reasonable to me.
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Demigod is doing any worse than Sins of a Solar Empire. But higher piracy numbers do mean a higher level of interest, which could mean that in the end, more people end up buying the game.
18,000 peak connections on day-1 is right inline with how games like Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 did, FYI.
18/04/2009 at 18:51 j c says:
Also note, please don’t start with the straw men and pretend like I’m in any way advocating piracy. I buy all my games and think that game pirates are the scum of the earth.
The only thing I’m saying here is why Brad Wardell’s “ignore the pirates, treat legitimate customers well” mantra has not been proven wrong here, and why there’s no reason for that mantra to continue serving him well.
18/04/2009 at 18:52 BritishTexan says:
@Psychopomp
So if devs who work till 3am deserve a prize or some sort of special mention, what about the thousands of us who work in IT support that have to be on-call 24/7/365 and quite often do get calls at all hours of the day and night? It would seem that by your scale, we should be up for the Presidential Medal of Freedom or similar…
18/04/2009 at 18:58 Chiablo says:
Honestly, if the game was on Steam… I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Also, I doubt this problem would have occurred since it requires considerably more effort to pirate a Steam game. There’s something unnerving to have to install another game distribution system on my PC just to play a single game. I like to consolidate.
Also, without a demo, they really should have expected this much piracy. All it would have taken is to have a stripped down multiplayer-only demo with 1 map and 4 demigods. Sales would have skyrocketed.
18/04/2009 at 18:58 j c says:
Oh, and one more thing – I’m not sure, dsmart, why you think you’re in a legitimate position to claim that Stardock is lying about their no-DRM claim in Demigod. Demigod doesn’t have DRM.
It doesn’t require activation to allow you to play. There is no way for Stardock to revoke your rights to play a game you bought. There is nothing stopping you from reselling the game. DRM = digital rights management. Demigod as a blasted CD Key, and that’s it. There is nothing within Demigod managing the digital rights you have with the game.
Only thing that’s “managed” is access to patches. If you think that it’s “DRM” to force you to provide a legitimate CD Key to download a patch from their servers, that’s an asinine standard you’re holding them to.
18/04/2009 at 19:01 j c says:
@Chiablo
Sins of a Solar Empire didn’t have a demo until a month and a half after release. Makes more sense to get your initial sales in right at the beginning from dedicated customers, wait a month or so to get the initial glitches fixed, gameplay tweaked a bit, and then release a demo.
Do you think that releasing a demo when all these connection problems were going on would have bode well for demo->purchase converts? Of course not.
In the meantime, releasing a demo might cut down on piracy numbers, but:
1) Pirates can’t play the game online anyway, and
2) Having legitimate demo users encounter connection problems on launch week isn’t exactly a positive introduction to the game.
18/04/2009 at 19:15 Larington says:
@JC You misunderstand, DSmarts point is that theres different kinds of DRM out there, theres the online activation type with stupid install limits, and theres CD keys, CD keys are still a system designed to limit (Restrict) unauthorised play of the game, it IS a form of DRM, just less controversial and intrusive than Securom.
18/04/2009 at 19:16 SwiftRanger says:
I’ll be glad to wait a few weeks till this comes out at retail in Europe (May 8th or 15th I think), seems to have a sort of advantage after all. :) Though a SupCom: FA patch is higher on my wish list.
As for that netcode, Stardock did all that apparently. I don’t think there’s anything GPGnet related in Demigod left except for the fact it’s also p2p. Maybe they should have built on GPGnet though because it was a decent service overall except for a few bugs (oh, that patching). As for p2p itself, pretty much every major RTS is using it, must mean something, doesn’t it?
18/04/2009 at 19:23 frymaster says:
@dsmart:
“3. If there is a key required – whether offline or online – it is a form of DRM. What has happened in this DG case is that this “DRM” has – just like SecuROM, Tages, Starforce etc – deprived legit gamers from using the product they PAID for.”
uh, what?
gamers weren’t deprived because of any DRM / auth checks. gamers were deprived because the check for game updates was timing out. How is that a DRM issue?
I agree that the game does include DRM (but not copy protection*) in that you need a legit key to get updates and play online, but that seems irrelevant to the problem.
@catska:
“Stardock’s always had DRM in their software, Impulse is just another form of DRM just like steam”
this is almost a question of definitions. (Just let me say to begin with that I don’t like impulse; I find steam a lot more user-friendly). In the sense that stardock doesn’t have an anonymous-access ftp server with all their games on it then yes, impulse is controlling access to downloads based on what it thinks is in your account. But unlike steam, once the game is on your computer you don’t need impulse installed to play it. My definition of _any_ kind of DRM (and I consider copy protection to be a subset of that) is that it’s something that happens after the game is installed, on a continuing basis. And yes, I consider Stardock’s “no DRM” mantra to be nothing more than marketing
I know some people consider even Steam’s “redownload your games at any time and get all your updates from one place” form of DRM too intrusive (possibly because of update delays); I wonder if Valve would do the zero-day-decryption-of-content thing without making the game exe require steam to run?
18/04/2009 at 19:31 Tei says:
“gamers weren’t deprived because of any DRM / auth checks. gamers were deprived because the check for game updates was timing out. How is that a DRM issue?”
I don’t know, but maybe he mean if the game where “FFA”, everyone is able to connect to some random server, or other people, withouth the AUTH HTTPS checks, the server would not have been hit hard.
I don’t know. *shrugs*
18/04/2009 at 19:50 dsmart says:
Never argue with a fool Tei. The argument is simple.
If this were a SecuROM game and the CD-ROM didn’t work when you took it home, you won’t be able to play the game. DRM.
If this were Steam and you preloaded, tried to play and couldn’t – as has happened NUMEROUS TIMES – you won’t be able to play the game. DRM.
If this were Impulse Drive and you bought the game (store or ESD) and tried to play (THIS IS A MULTIPLAYER GAME BTW) the game and couldn’t – because you couldn’t connect to an auth server – you won’t be able to play the game. DRM.
Now imagine this. You buy the game. No DRM. You take is home, plug it in, play. You don’t need a CD-KEY to go to an auth server to get patches or play multiplayer, you don’t need the CD-ROM in the drive to play etc. NO DRM. NO HASSLES
If ALL the people and pirates who couldnt’ play DG when they BOUGHT or STOLE it didn’t have to auth, we would NOT be have this [DRM] related argument.
People just like to bury their heads in the sand and ignore then elephant in the room.
If nothing else, maybe Brad will shutup now about this “No DRM” nonsense. Sadly it took someone else’s product to teach him that PEOPLE MOSTLY CAN’T BE TRUSTED no matter how good your intensions.
Who said anything about lying? Your words, not mine. Its just frigging common sense that no matter how you slice or dice it, this is a DRM related issue. But go ahead, ignore that if you will.
Exactly. But that other person said that because someone was making $8 an hour (as if he was there and knows who was working until 3AM and who wasn’t) that we should feel sorry for them. If I’m being paid $8/hr and didn’t have to work at 3AM and you asked me? I’d say fuck you and go right back to sleep. You get to make a choice.
18/04/2009 at 20:12 Gorgeras says:
But what would happen if you cleaned the Unclean Beast? Would it die? Would it be a Clean beast? Would it simply develop diseases resistant to the detergents?
18/04/2009 at 20:29 Snappyterm says:
I’m fed up of pirates. Whether they directly make single-player PC games unprofitable, or they are simply percieved to, my favourite area of gaming may very well be on the way out, because of these kind of wankers. I sincerely hope that the Pirate bay lads don’t manage to appeal their way out of their year inside. Fuck them, and the next ones, and the next ones.
18/04/2009 at 20:38 An Innocuous Coin says:
I’ve just been practicing offline, honestly. When you hear the explainations, the netcode problems make perfect sense, so I see no real reason to get up in arms about it, especially with how prompt they’ve been about fixing the issues. Pity web reviews won’t take this into account, though.
18/04/2009 at 20:42 syrion says:
Mr. Smart is famous for releasing buggy, unfinished games, and yet he’s here criticizing GPG and Stardock, who have released some of the best PC games of recent years: Sins, SupCom, and GalCiv I/II. I bought Demigod and am enjoying it despite the netcode issues. I have been playing with friends over Hamachi. Does no-one remember the horror that was Steam when HL2 was first released? I couldn’t even play single player for several days, and when I was finally able to do so I was affected by a horrible sound-caching bug that was patched about a week later.
Demigod is a good game and it’s sad that the netcode/piracy issues (and criticisms like Mr. Smart’s) have overshadowed that.
18/04/2009 at 20:57 Rich_P says:
Since this entire issue has been grossly misrepresented by Ars and some other blogs (I’m really sick of “journalists” cherry-picking info that fits the story they want to tell), I think it’s appropriate to link to another Brad Wardell interview. The important bits:
I don’t want to do anything that inconveniences our legitimate customers because even if I stop all piracy, I don’t agree that it would noticeably increase our sales.
You have to take a step back and say, “if you had stopped them from pirating it, would they have bought it?” The answer is probably no.
Lots of commentators here and elsewhere totally ignore everything Wardell’s said about the issue and instead, quite frankly, proceed to talk about their hindquarters.
18/04/2009 at 20:58 Zanthox says:
Awww, Wardell seems like such a nice guy ;-(
O where have all the Ninjas gone?
18/04/2009 at 21:13 Kieron Gillen says:
thinkingork: You know, when you accuse people of being factually iffy, it’s traditional to point out a fact which is wrong. There’s nothing in Brad’s post which contradicts anything Alec has said.
KG
18/04/2009 at 21:31 bookworm8at says:
It’s the forces of light against the forces of evil. But evolution released human with broken neural net code, so people cannot connect to each other.
Love
18/04/2009 at 21:41 Jim Rossignol says:
How poetic.
18/04/2009 at 21:44 Noc says:
So . . . Love is the best DRM?
18/04/2009 at 21:51 Tworak says:
I like Demigod.
18/04/2009 at 22:05 jalf says:
@Noc: Love is DRM? So we should all boycott it and downrate it on Amazon, I guess?
18/04/2009 at 22:46 syrion says:
They’re not beyond reproach. They are good developers, however, who put out decent games and who will fix the issues which have arisen. The “damage,” as you say, lies primarily in that reviewers (read: Gamespot) seem to be reviewing Demigod rather more harshly than the many other titles which launch with networking issues. Some people still think game review sites which apportion out grades are credible, and that will impact sales for the entire lifetime of the product. It’s very disappointing.
As for ad hominem attacks, well, the irony there is hilarious.
18/04/2009 at 23:48 DK says:
“But of course here come the evangelists to downplay piracy and try and push the blame onto something else. 12% of 140,000 people are playing legitimate copies and people here have the nerve to blame Gamestop and the lack of a demo? Are you kidding me?”
Are you kidding? Piracy is not something that’ll bring the industry down. Are they still making movies despite the ease of piracy (wonderfully symbolized by VHS)? Last I checked, they do. Do they still make music, despite the ease of piracy? Last I checked, they do.
In both of those cases, vocal figureheads (mostly the publishers) have becried piracy and that it would destroy their respective industries. It has not happened then, it will not happen now.
18/04/2009 at 23:53 j c says:
I’ll reiterate once more the only important point I made above, and the only important point that the vast majority of people have chosen to ignore:
Stardock planned for a 50,000-person capacity that they didn’t expect to reach until a few weeks after launch, if they EVER reached that.
On release day, they already reached 18,000 (legitimate) users – the same numbers that Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead regularly put up, and not too far off from what those games did on their own launch days.
What does that mean? Demigod is doing fine. Their legitimate userbase is already well on track to meeting their predictions for how much server capacity they should have.
dsmart – you’re making bold, baseless claims about what numbers the game might put up or might not put up, and alluding to the idea that they’ll be disappointed with sales. Well, the only true pieces of evidence we have – expected capacity a few weeks down the road, and legitimate concurrent player base on launch day – seems to demonstrate that the game is doing damned fine and dandy sales-wise.
19/04/2009 at 00:02 Interjecting says:
19/04/2009 at 00:08 Tei says:
And then, the game got fixed, and GPG/Impuse got a butload of money, and everybody was happy, happy, forever, ever, ever, ever, ever…. lalala, ..
19/04/2009 at 00:28 LewieP says:
This should cheer everyone up.
19/04/2009 at 00:35 dsmart says:
@ Interjecting
Thats not even remotely close to what you – or him – are implying that I said.
Never said anything about numbers, low, high or otherwise. Nor did I say anything about them being disappointed with sales. Failing to meet expectations doesn’t fall in either category. Nice try though.
My comment has everything to do with Brad’s notion that they sold 500K of SiNs because of “No DRM”. Which, we all know – at least us sane ones here in reality land – is rubbish. The game suceeded for all the aforementioned reasons, but was still pirated as hell. THATS what I’m talking about and refering to – and is exactly what I wrote.
19/04/2009 at 00:41 RPS says:
Big deletefest here. We go away for five minutes and look what happens… Everyone – be you reader, developer, whoever – keep your crazy rage in check.
19/04/2009 at 00:45 j c says:
Brad Wardell never said that Sins sold well because of a lack of DRM, actually. He said this:
1) Sins wasn’t pirated much because its target audience was of the type who are more than happy to purchase games, and because those who normally go and pirate everything probably wouldn’t be interested in pirating it.
2) Stardock’s DRM policy is not to increase sales, but rather to not harass legitimate consumers with copy protection that doesn’t help very much.
He never said that lacking DRM increases sales, and has therefore never and would never brag about sales using a lack of DRM as a reason for those sales.
19/04/2009 at 00:48 Interjecting says:
@ DSmart:
If you say so man.
19/04/2009 at 00:54 jalf says:
*rages crazily*
@dsmart: How is it possible for a game to fail to meet expectations, *without* the developers being disappointed? Isnt that essentially what the words “disappointment” and “expectation” mean? You are disappointed if something does not meet your expectations.
19/04/2009 at 01:07 DrGonzo says:
I wrote out a few paragraphs about this but I can’t control my rage. Every time piracy is mentioned I start fuming.
I bought this game and I buy a LOT of games, I also pirate games. I also love taking drugs and many other illigal things. I know they are not strictly relevant. But I feel like I am being called a criminal for everything else I do so screw it, why not pirate things.
I’m still pretty enraged and this probably doesn’t really represent my views and is just a rant so apologies for that.
19/04/2009 at 01:08 Larington says:
“Are you kidding? Piracy is not something that’ll bring the industry down.”
Ok, that kind of (Frankly presumptuous) comment I can’t overlook, let me present you with some factual research, this comes from the Independent Game Developers Association Quality of Life White Paper, bottom of page 42:
“It is a well-known fact that a very small proportion of games published become successful in the marketplace. In 1999, fewer than 3% of PC Games available on the market, and about 12% of console titles, sold more than 100,000 copies – a figure that is itself often far below the breakeven point [Laramée00].”
That is to say, of the games released in 1999, the majority of games failed to break even, they made a loss. It is unlikely that this situation will have changed, especially as game development budgets have gotten more expensive, not less. If piracy weren’t so rampant, how many of those games might’ve broken even, how many might have kept a developer afloat long enough that the stars might align for the company, resulting in a stellar game that goes down in legend? How many? How many jobs are pirates going to put at risk until they put down their self righteous attitudes and admit that piracy is a bigger problem than they want to admit. Sales are high in the games industry, maybe, but profits certainly aren’t…
19/04/2009 at 01:15 DrGonzo says:
Maybe the industry needs to change? And maybe for this to happen it has to crash and burn.
Just speculating, don’t bite my head off!
19/04/2009 at 01:21 jalf says:
@Larington: None of that is directly tied to piracy though. Less piracy does not automatically imply greater sales. It might just mean that fewer people play your game.
The point you’re overlooking is that piracy *in itself* does not cost anyone anything. Brad Wardell understands this. What matters is how many people *buy* your game. Those that don’t simply do not matter, whether they pirate it or not.
That’s not to say that *if* pirates can be converted to legal customers, it wouldn’t benefit the industry. But the same applies to people who just never tried the game *at all*. It would also benefit the industry if they bought the game. But they don’t.
I don’t condone piracy. Consider this playing the devils advocate if it helps deflect a flame war. ;)
But equating piracy directly with lack of profitability is just as presumptuous as the comment you were responding to.
The two are related, certainly, but the relationship is not that simple. Piracy can help sales as well. A lot of big IP’s are big *because* they were initially pirated. That’s how people heard of the game originally. They played it, and liked it, and a few years later, when the sequel comes out, they go “hey, I know that”, and buy it. iD Software owes much of their success to the fact that their early games were pirated. That gave them the recognition that ensured their later games would sell like hot cakes.
There are a lot of big games that we’d have never even heard of, if we hadn’t played a pirated copy when we were kids. Don’t underestimate that effect. When I was a kid, buying a lot of games just wasn’t an option. Instead, we played pirated games on my friend’s Amiga. That’s how I learned about Civilization, and today, I own all four games in the series. Because I liked it when I played the pirated copy. A lot of us are only gamers in the first place, because we were able to experience games before we could afford to buy them in any quantity.
I’m not saying piracy is a net positive for the industry, but it is not always a net negative either. It helps broaden your customer base, and in the long run it pulls in some customers. But yes, it it also means that you lose some customers.
I’m not in any way defending piracy (I know the anti-piracy brigade is going to completely ignore this statement, but I’ll try anyway), I’m simply pointing out that it’s not as simple as “piracy means fewer sales”.
19/04/2009 at 01:24 Rich_P says:
Is it reasonable to compare the videogame landscape of 1999 to that of 2009? How many videogames in 1999 were made with $100 million budgets (GTAIV)? And was piracy as easy and widespread pre-bittorrent days?
Sales are high in the games industry, maybe, but profits certainly aren’t
Videogaming at large is indeed seeing record sales, which means people are buying games, not stealing them. If profits are down, despite record revenue, it means overhead is too high and/or the company’s being grossly mismanaged.
19/04/2009 at 01:24 Larington says:
It demonstrates how fragile games development is. Thats the point I’m trying to make. We’re playing russian roulette with peoples livelihoods.
19/04/2009 at 01:28 Cptn.Average says:
I don’t want to do anything that inconveniences our legitimate customers because even if I stop all piracy, I don’t agree that it would noticeably increase our sales.
You have to take a step back and say, “if you had stopped them from pirating it, would they have bought it?” The answer is probably no.
They’ll always be a percentage that would buy it, however small. In this case if 10% of those pirating the game had had no other option and instead bought it, DemiGod’s sales would have jumped by a third. I think that’s significant.
19/04/2009 at 01:28 jalf says:
@Larington: I agree with that one. It’s striking how few games manage to make a profit, and whether or not piracy is the main culprit for that, it is a major problem for the industry. Game development as it is, is extremely fragile like you say. Studios are always going under, even in the best economic times. Not because the industry isn’t earning record revenues, but because most of that money goes to a few AAA games, the publishers, the retailers, the middlemen and numerous other money sinks.
But most likely, 10% is an unrealistically high figure. And there is always a choice. Games virtually always get cracked. The problem with DRM is that it only has to be cracked *once*, and then every pirate can play it. You are right, DRM would have a strong case *if it worked*. But it is unbelievably fragile. It is so ridiculously easy to copy binary data. Make one copy of a game, and it can be in the hands of every warez group within a matter of hours. And if just one of them is able to crack it, that crack can be in the hands of every would-be pirate within another hour or two.
That means it is essentially impossible to remove the option of pirating the game. It can always be done by those who want to.
19/04/2009 at 01:29 Rich_P says:
I’m not saying piracy is a net positive for the industry, but it is not always a net negative either. It helps broaden your customer base, and in the long run it pulls in some customers. But yes, it it also means that you lose some customers.
The exact same thing can be said of used games sales.
I have a feeling that all gaming will eventually be subscription/account-based to eliminate piracy and the second-hand market, both of which deprive publishers of money.
19/04/2009 at 01:39 jalf says:
@Rich_P: Yes, it can. And some developers have made that exact point too. (Soren Johnson made a big post about it on his blog, going against all the big publishers who want used games sales eliminated)
That seems to me to be one of the major problems with the games industry. It is run on a model that is entirely obsessed with short-term revenue. It is cannibalizing its long-term profits in order to maximize revenue *today*. I’m not saying that they should simply allow piracy and encourage people to trade games, but they should consider the positive effects of these things, and examine how it can be exploited. They need to think in number of copies played in addition to number of copies sold. They need to recognize that 10 sales and 100 people playing the game is better than 10 sales and 10 people playing the game.
19/04/2009 at 01:41 dsmart says:
Indeed. But the problem is that everyone and their mother-in-law seems to think that you need to make a zillion dollar MMO in order to have a successful subscription based game. Thats silly. And the reason why so many MMO’s fail. Some spectacularly.
19/04/2009 at 02:12 the affront says:
Yes, Larington, how many indeed.
How many shitty games would have sold well because – if there is one at all – demos often are prettied-up, crappy-parts-omitting propaganda, many games are pure shit once you manage to look past all the hype and blatant lies – and YOU CAN’T EVEN RETURN THEM. Even WITH all the DRM shit these days you can’t. How’s that for logic? Shouldn’t draconian DRM guarantee that games should be treated as any other product and be returnable if it turns out you don’t like it?
While there are a few developers that really shouldn’t have gone under out of the probably only a couple that have done so directly related to piracy, they’re the exception and not the rule. I really can’t bring myself to mourn for people releasing crap at the same price as quality games while feeding them essentially welfare money hoping for the remote possibility that they somehow manage to make something worthwhile some time in the far future.
The point here is that piracy makes software (probably even the only, I guess) a product that can be judged comfortably and is (quasi-)instantly-delivered in its entirety at no cost to either party before one decides to pay for it. Think about if that were possible for every other kind of product. You’d press a button, and you’d have EVERY model of, say, new plasma TV assembled and connected in your living room. Do you really think any kind of even slightly inferior (value for money) product would survive? That is how I see piracy: as a kind of harsh, abstract evolutionary mechanism.
But I’m thinking out my ass, here (probably obviously, too), because I only have anecdotal evidence of me and my friends/acquaintances pirating stuff for well over 10 years WHILE ALSO BUYING THE STUFF WE HONESTLY LIKED.
I’d really be surprised if even 5% of all the pirates ended up buying the stuff they pirate, anyway – most just do it because they can and it’s easy and to satisfy some weird primal hunter/gatherer urge I never understood – at least those that I know do.
But maybe I’m wrong and there’s this huge blob of faceless, evil, filthy rich pirates bathing in their open-air whirlpools filled with ducats located in some tropic paradise featuring white beaches, emerald sea and coconut palms while sipping martinis and smoking cigars, permanently downloading the complete usenet and silently sniggering to themselves about cheating some poor sod out of, for them, a cheap tip’s amount of money. Frankly I’ll never know.
19/04/2009 at 03:27 Rich_P says:
@jalf: Soren’s blog is pretty insightful. His defense of used games is one of my favorite posts though
They need to recognize that 10 sales and 100 people playing the game is better than 10 sales and 10 people playing the game.
The Introversion guys brilliantly took advantages of piracy for their release of DEFCON. From Jim’s interview with them:
We figured that genuine players would still have a better time if they were playing against pirates, than playing against nobody. So we produced a pirate version of the game and released it into the world.
we put the full game out with a specific authentication key, so we could track the use of it. It was all switched on and you could play the pirated game with that key, but at any time we could flip the switch and turn that version of the game off, with a message saying that you needed to pay for the game. That brought in new purchases. The idea … is to accept that there’s going to be a pirate version on day one and take advantage of that.
19/04/2009 at 03:58 bansama says:
“It is a well-known fact that a very small proportion of games published become successful in the marketplace. In 1999, fewer than 3% of PC Games available on the market, and about 12% of console titles, sold more than 100,000 copies – a figure that is itself often far below the breakeven point [Laramée00].”
Does that comment take into account the quality of the 97% of games that apparently failed to break even? Did it take into account the amount which actually found shelf space? The amount that was actually advertised in a fashion other than relying on word of mouth and arcane rituals? Did it even take into account over saturation of the market? There are simply far too many games made and most are of lackluster quality.
Or did that comment actually specifically indicate piracy as the sole cause of that huge failure rate? And if so, how on Earth did that actually arrive at that conclusion?
Sure piracy is a problem, but we have no real facts to state how much of a problem. All we have are publishers who like to use it as an excuse for poor sales when perhaps they should actually be examining the quality of their product.
We have those that look at the number of seeds/leechers and then jump to conclusions about the amount of piracy, without taking into account what happens thereafter. What is the actual percentage of people who pirated a game that then went out and paid for it?
Sure we hear of extremely low figures for such conversion rates, but then all we’re hearing are figures put out by an entity that has an invested interest in making piracy look as bad as possible.
The we have the DRM companies who also, for their own interests and livelihood, need to make piracy sound as bad as possible lest they no longer manage to sell their product.
So once again, I call for a completely unbiased, independent research into the TRUE affects of piracy in the gaming industry. Then perhaps we’ll get a much fuller picture that isn’t solely tainted by the views of the publishers or pirates who will twist any figures to their advantage.
19/04/2009 at 04:12 DrGonzo says:
@bansama: Well said.
19/04/2009 at 04:51 JKjoker says:
wait, wait , wait, you with the DRM and pirates things you guys are getting away from the point here.
Let me get this straight, GPG releases a game that allows playing single play without a crack (not that it matters since it would have been cracked eventually), then the games sneakily CALLS HOME, it doesn’t ask if you want to update it, it doesn’t ask if you want to do a “general server keep alive”, it just does it, and the servers go down…
Apparently a script kiddie wrote the net code so that GPG actually ends up DDOSing themselves, 120k ppl trying to connect once, just once did that ? come on, the game would have to try several times per second to actually DDOS those servers, do they really expect me to believe the 120k just finished their download and started the game all at the same time ? or that a few thousand/hundred requests at the same time from the few ppl that would statistically start the game at the same time kill a server ?, wth are they smoking ?…
Why does the game find it so important to call home ? why not asking us ?
is it really the pirates fault ? they were not even trying to connect intentionally, its the stupid Trojan-like call home feature that did it. Have you tried any demos lately ? i have, just like the full games, they ALL try to call home, if they had released a demo and all those supposed pirates would have tried the demo version instead, which would very likely include the call home feature, they would have crashed the servers ANYWAY.
and just one thing about DRM and this call home crap, who gets to say what rights are mine and which aren’t ? who gets to say which information you are sending with those hidden call home features is “harmless information” (like they always call it) ?, You know who they are, the freaking devs and publishers, we get nothing to say about it, we just get to squat, lube our holes and take it.
19/04/2009 at 05:03 Persus-9 says:
@Kevlar: Just a thought but maybe he’s talking like he’s a ration human being because he is a rational human being? He certainly seems to have come up with a pretty decent argument for his position that valid or not certainly requires a reply from those who wish to criticise him and can’t be dismissed out of hand as you have done.
I wonder how you would reply in detail if forced? What is the basis of your condemnation? I’d really love to hear an exposition of your moral philosophy and how it relates to copyright infringement rather than just rhetoric.
It seems to me that in these discussions of copyright infringement that there are a few different basic moral philosophies at play and lack of recognition of this causes people to talk past each other an inordinate amount.
There seems to be a set of people who equate morality with legality. Personally I find this position utterly crazy because it makes it impossible to criticise the law, so in Iran the law is quite correct and homosexuality is completely wrong and homosexuals should be hung but in the UK the law is also completely correct and homosexuality is completely fine.
There are also those who seem to just have a brute conviction copyright infringement is either wrong or not and can’t/won’t back this up with anything. To me this brute intuition seems a very dubious basis for morality because it leaves no room for moral argument and I can’t see why you’d be able to rationally maintain any moral beliefs in the face of moral disagreement. I believe most of these people to have no rational basis for their morality and are in fact simply reflecting social norms.
Finally there are the moral relativist who don’t believe there’s a fact of the matter about whether copyright infringement is right or wrong. They don’t seem to speak up much but I know quite a lot of moral relativists are out there and I suspect a lot of pirates on the street are probably moral relativists at least until they thought about it. I find this completely dreadful because it doesn’t allow that anyone can be morally wrong about anything, so again Josef Mengele never did anything wrong.
I’m guessing a fair few pirates are also ethical egoists (or selfish amoral bastards for short) who believe that what’s right is to act in there own self-interest so if they can get away without paying they should because it’s in their interest to hold onto their money. This seems like a really fundamental mistake about the nature of morality to me.
There must also be Kantian’s, those who follow a golden rule like ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ or something similar. I think copyright infringement makes an interesting and problematic case for such people because I suspect there are people with this view in both camps, probably a lot of the idealistic open-source types who hate all forms of copyright and also a lot of people who would wish to maintain control of anything they’d make and thus condemn copyright infringement.
Then there are the utilitarians, people who believe that broadly speaking it’s only wrong if it creates a net decrease in happiness. A lot of rational pirates seem to fall into this category and they attempt to argue about whether or not copyright infringement hurts anyone. There are also a fair few anti-copyright infringement types who hold this moral philosophy but who hold that copyright infringement is harmful (I count myself among them).
To my mind there are only interesting discussions to be had about whether or not copyright infringement is morally wrong if one of the last two positions is a stated starting assumption because if any of the other positions are taken then the moral status of copyright infringement isn’t really open to discussion and if we wish to argue between the positions then it probably isn’t wise to discuss them purely in the context of copyright infringement, that would be crazy.
So with that in mind it seems that ‘the affront’ is some form of utilitarian (piracy allows him to reward only good games and will thus improve games for everyone in the long run) so the challenge for ‘kevlar’ or anyone else who wishes to condemn ‘the affront’ is to give an argument as to why copyright infringement is harmful or give a general argument against utilitarianism.
Similarly for discussions of DRM and consumer rights in general if a proper moral argument is to be made one way or the other we need to state first if what moral framework is being assumed and replies must either share the same framework or directly challenge it otherwise we simply end up with these huge threads of people throwing insults and talking past each other.
19/04/2009 at 05:42 thinkingork says:
@ RPS
The problem with this article is the lack of clarification. The use of Brad Wardell’s quote here implies that piracy is the fault to blame. But it is not and even agreed by Brad himself. Please read Brad’s recent update at
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467.
RPS, you can do better!
19/04/2009 at 05:52 JKjoker says:
@thinkingork, dude : http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46194/102-000-Pirates-Overload-Demigods-Online-Infrastructure
tell me he is not blaming piracy of “slamming” his servers, he tuned it down later, yes, but he did say it
19/04/2009 at 08:15 thinkingork says:
@JKjoker
the article you linked is published on 16th, the one I linked is published on 17th. Maybe Brad changed his mind overnight. Anyway, this RPS article is published on 18th, so it should had used up-to-date information.
19/04/2009 at 08:23 Tei says:
@JKjoker: On the public declaration, the guys say is not piracy, in bold letters with underline. I suppose the bold font is enough, so the underline was like overdoing it…. Anyway, is true, the guys are simply telling the whole history, and admiting his errors. Behind honest. The problem with The Truth and Honesty, is that a “News Title” is not enough space to fit the truth. Ask the journalism here. So you have to go with the next cool thing…
Even the people here, myself, got somewhat lost in translation.
19/04/2009 at 09:44 RPS says:
Deletotron has just had a huge breakfast of childish angry comments. Om nom nom nom.
19/04/2009 at 09:54 Mac says:
To be fair – I intend to purchase this game when it is released in the UK – currently the 15th May.
I refuse to pay the mad online prices for it at the moment – and I will be waiting for shopto.net who have the game for £17.99.
Given that there was no demo, online prices being too expensive and the delayed UK retail launch – I picked up an “evaluation” version.
All this ranting over pirates is nonsense … release a game properly and you wouldn’t have as many problems !!!
19/04/2009 at 10:28 catska says:
It’s funny to see Wardell tripping over himself trying to retract his statements about piracy so he doesn’t lose the elitist crowd who is desperate to prove that piracy isn’t a problem with PC gaming. Anyone can tell his original posts on the subject were clear in saying piracy is a huge problem with this title and the platform.
And yes, Stardock has had DRM all along with Stardock Central and Impulse. What else would you call having to install a third party game manager just to update games purchased legally from a store? Most of you are just in denial that you fell for their ‘We have no DRM, support us revolutionaries!’ marketing spiel.
19/04/2009 at 10:51 Larington says:
Interesting how you choose to focus on the worst extreme…
How many of those 97% of games scored around the 60-80% mark, were actually fun if you gave them a chance, but apparently weren’t good enough to warrent even paying a £10 budget release (Which may be too late, I’m aware of one developer not living long enough to see the game arrive on the shelves)… Of the developers that made those games, how many failed because of dissapointing sales and how many of them might’ve been able to carry lessons from previous projects forward to the next ones. The next games might have been 85%, then 90% and everyone would be talking about those ones for years to come.
Its bizarre how hysterical people are about defending game ratings in reviews if we’re then grabbing a pirate copy to make our own minds up and after having had a couple of hours with the game, then written it off purely because its not a 95% game. After having spent a couple of hours with the game – If it was so truly awful, you wouldn’t have got passed 5 minutes of it, yet alone a few hours… Maybe those hours are actually worth something, you know?
There are plenty of games that have shown real promise but just didn’t sell well, the latest Tomb Raider was a very well made game (imho) but it failed to meet sales expectations by about 500k. Mirrors Edge and Dead Space are well thought off for what they are trying to do yet apparently these have fared poorly in the market as well.
Then you’ve got Startopia, a game that deserved to sell, was well thought of by many journalists and just didn’t sell.
19/04/2009 at 11:17 pepper says:
problem is the industry needs crazy amounts of sales for a single game to break even, deu to the huge team sizes and dev costs of games. And nowadays, paying 60 euro’s for a game isnt something i do anymore.
19/04/2009 at 11:23 Jubaal says:
Yaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr
19/04/2009 at 11:29 DK says:
@Larrington:
““It is a well-known fact that a very small proportion of games published become successful in the marketplace. In 1999, fewer than 3% of PC Games available on the market, and about 12% of console titles, sold more than 100,000 copies – a figure that is itself often far below the breakeven point [Laramée00].””
First of all, their games failing to break even is very much their own fault, not some mythical pirates’ – it’s what happens when you make games that would have to sell millions and millions of copies to break even. Make. Cheaper. Games. You might have noticed that games that are made on a budget (Sins of a good example) more than break even – they’re hugely profitable.
Secondly, you ignore the historical precedent, yet again. We’ve heard your spiel before, verabtim – it’s not realistic in the slightest.
19/04/2009 at 11:48 Mac says:
Just looking back – the companies that tend to do well support their games long after sale, and most of them have a significant online portion that is off limits to most of the pirates … the trick is to obviously support your games long term and through the demonstration of this there is a benefit which most people will buy into.
Too many games are released half finished and get patched up later (if ever) … due to the poor quality control and the lack of demos people are always going to be more inclined to try out an “evaluation” copy before parting with their £££ – the problem here is that only a very few games are worth playing for more than an hour, so a fair % of the people with the “evaluation” copy do not purchase the original, but neither do they continue to play the game. This isn’t a lost sale due to piracy – this is a lost sale due to a crap game !!!
19/04/2009 at 12:36 Myros says:
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something in the devs comments but …
19/04/2009 at 12:38 Myros says:
Dam wierd quote code :)
Above meant to quote -
As a side note, no we can’t just eliminate the infrastructure being used up by warez users because they’re running the unprotected retail version and we can’t make a distinction between retail and pirated since there’s no copy protection.
19/04/2009 at 13:21 dsmart says:
@ JKjoker
Oh but you’re getting it all wrong. According to those with their heads buried in the sand, thats not DRM. It just decides to call home to check if GPG left the stove on.
Don’t say that too loudly lest you attract the ire of the lynch mob.
As to the piracy is responsible for declining game sales. That, as I’ve always said, it is a load of horseshit. Fact is, good games will sell – piracy or not. Bad games will fail – piracy or not.
It is easy to blame it all on piracy because, well, its easy. But if you imply that there are more pirates who like the game enough to steal it, than there are those who like it enough to pay for it, then maybe that pub/dev needs to look at the games they’re developing.
I’ve been in business for some 20+ odd years. Sure my games get pirated, but the fact is that because I cater to an elitist crowd – who apparently like my games – I have been able to continue cranking out games. In all my history, from Usenet to now, you won’t find a SINGLE post, press release, interview or whatever with my clamouring that piracy affects my game sales. I’m still in business.
Same with Stardock and most others. Sure, if you can make $5, why settle for $2? The goal is to ensure that your game is worth $5 to those who like it enough to pay for it. If you don’t make a game that enough people find worth $5, then you’re well and truly farked.
19/04/2009 at 14:32 theleif says:
I have a crazy idea. How about discussing what Brad/Stardock actually is saying, instead of what you dream up in your heads? I know, it’s crazy, and probably not as self-satisfying, but still:
Well, what a dramatic week it’s been. The teams at Stardock and GPG have been burning the midnight oil this week.
As those of you who have the game can already see, the server issues are gone. We’ve recreated a duplicate of the server infrastructure we had but dedicated to users who have the most recent version of the game and a valid CD key (serial #).
Based on the logs, we are seeing lots of games being played on-line now. Yay. Average game has approximately 4.7 humans in it which is a good sign.
Some clarifications
I’ve seen a lot of news articles this week and a lot of confusion about what occurred this week. The issue isn’t terribly complicated.
Ars Technica had a good article that describes what happened. But still, a lot of people seem to think warez users are able to play multiplayer games. No, they can’t. Even the retail box has a serial # in it that users have to use and be validated to play online. What brought down servers was a lot more benign than that. It was the HTTPS requests to inform users if there was a new version along with checking the community features for info (friends lists, chat channels, etc.) and things like that. Things like that are pretty piddly. It’s only when you get a ton of users doing that at the same time that it becomes a problem as we saw.
But here’s the thing: While piracy is annoying, you can’t blame piracy for this problem. Let’s face it, there’s plenty of data out there about how many pirated games are being played. We should have looked at that. We assumed since Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations, both of which sold extremely well and got great reviews, that the # of pirated copies of Demigod in use would probably be in the same ballpark, maybe twice as much. But had we looked at what other publishers have said, we would have known that it’s not unusual for there to be hundreds of thousands of warez copies in use. And if we had, we could have simply had the retail version not have any HTTP calls in it and instead just had an update button on the main menu to check for updates and voila, problem solved.
The second misconception is the argument that because Demigod’s retail version is heavily pirated that it costs massive sales. But that, again, puts the blame on the wrong parties. If you want to talk about the horrible multiplayer experience on launch day, well, that’s our fault because of what I said above. If you want to say that the horrible day 1 multiplayer experience resulted in negative game reviews which will seriously damage the game’s sales then I say again, that’s our fault too because of what I said above OR we could have just sent out the review copies on release day (Tuesday) and reviewers wouldn’t have had it until Thursday by which point the problem had largely been resolved and the review scores would have been fine. But in either case, it’s still our fault.
So now what?
Now that the servers are working fine we’re moving away from the “#$R@#@# Demigod sux!” posts and into the regular new game release issues.
So what issues are we seeing and working on? Here are a few at the top of our lists:
1. Players getting disconnected during games. Demigod’s lag tolerance is fairly low resulting in disconnects if a player lags out a bit. This is fairly easy to fix. You get a player in Australia playing a user in Europe and there will be times when there’s a hicup in their connection and POW, disconnect and it’s extremely frustrating. I played all day today and it happened to me. This is a very high priority.
2. NAT negotiation. For users outside the United States in particular using DSL, this is a problem. This is a case where player A can’t see player B and thus they can’t play together. This is something we will be aggressively looking at next week. If we hadn’t had the server overload, we likely would have this addressed already.
3. Pantheon games. Right now, the system is excessively biased for new players – it wants to include AI players as cannon fodder. While this is fine and dandy for new players, once you know what you’re doing, having AI players in the game is incredibly annoying. So next week we’re going to change it so that if you have played a few games, it will wean the player off of AI players until you only play humans online. Same for Skirmish.
4. Favor Points and such. There’s some annoying stuff happening with favor points which is related to the ranking system in Demigod as well. First off, we plan to reset the rankings at some point when we enter Epoch 1 (we are in Epoch 0 presently game-wise, I’ll explain Epochs later but in short, every so often we’re going to reset the rankings, save the results as an epoch and go from there). In Epoch 1, custom games won’t count anymore as there’s too many ways to game it.
5. Misc. Bugs. There was a crush bug in the game that we’ve fixed internally but it got to be too late in the evening to package it up and get it released tonight. We have internally fixed the annoying issue of “A ppplayer has left the game” at the start of skirmish and pantheon games. Basically, when you get a new game going, there’s some data that has to be exchanged between players at the start. But the threshold of time you’re given to do this before it decides you’re too slow is set too low so we’re changing this to be more tolerant. In our tests with players we found on the chat channel who were having problems, it took care of it.
So that’s what we have in store for next week. After that, we can look at the typical balance requests, cheese stuff, and whatever else crops up.
Now, while the reviews are likely to have a pretty serious impact on sales, it does not affect our plans to continue to release updates and enhancements to the game nor does it affect our plans to release additional free Demigods.
For most of you, have fun this weekend! For those of you who are having a problem with something, hang in there. We’ve got your back!
19/04/2009 at 15:29 Mac says:
@theleif – so basically they are saying that now they have a seperate setup for people with legit copies, they have found that the online mode is kicking players, people can;t see each other in game if they are using DSL, you get paired with AI players rather than real players more than wanted, the ranking system is borked … other than that everything is tickerty-boo … ooh, except that they have seen teh scores they are going to get and they are craptastic … hmm, sounds like a successful launch to me !!! :p
19/04/2009 at 15:40 the affront says:
Persus-9: I’ve missed that apparently raging Kevlar guy you’re replying to due to delicious sleep, but: pretty much, yeah.
The only time I see piracy as morally wrong is when one would have the means and inclination to buy a game were it not for piracy. If one only tries it with no prior intent to purchase (and might then even be persuaded to DO buy it if it turns out to be good), to judge its quality, or even plays the whole damn thing but would honestly NOT have bought it due to piracy and judging it bad value for the money (yes, slippery slope there of self-delusion to save a few bucks, but still) or being too poor, then I really don’t understand why people think it’s morally wrong.
My theory is that those people have a rather shallow, not consciously scrutinized copy of morality and would if it were not for some arbitrary rules deeming it illegal very much pirate everything they’d ever want themselves – they’re angry because they feel FORCED to pay for something while others do not, not because they honestly feel it’s worth their money and is an effort worth supporting (or maybe are just small minded and expect everyone to like the same games they do exactly as much as they do, one of the two).
The only problem I can see with this “responsible piracy” are bargain bin titles not selling, as Larington said. But as he also said, by the time many games get that far, the original developers often don’t see any money of that, so.. I’m not sure how bad a problem it really is.
Anyway, for the bottom line: I realize my ramblings require a probably utopian degree of honesty/basic decency from the general pirate/consumer for piracy to have no negative impact whatsoever, thus _IF_ there was a completely non-intrusive, cheap and actually working type of DRM (multiplayer CD keys are the closest to it I can think of) for single player combined with demos showing about 25% of the full game at release plus being able to return a game for any reason (after all, DRM works now, no reason not to), I’d be all for it. But yeah, that’s pretty utopian itself.
tl;dr: if a pirate is essentially a decent human being, then there is nothing wrong with him being a pirate
19/04/2009 at 16:02 dsmart says:
@ Mac
You do realize that he’s from the Stardock/GPG team, right?
19/04/2009 at 16:24 theleif says:
@Mac: Never said all is well. They have borked the launch and they admit it. Thats my point. Also, it would be nice if people stopped saying that Stardock is against drm. Thats just not true. Their stand on DRM is that cumbersome drm is a hassle for paying customers and seldom prevent people from pirating anyway. Impulse is their form of drm. No cd check or protection on their games, but if you want to get updates and extra content, you need to log into impulse. Their DRM is meant to be a carrot and not a whip. This clearly didn’t work out this time (so far).
@dsmart I’m not. Wouldnt mind if i was, though, they seem like a nice company to work for. But i’ll sort of like living in sweden.
19/04/2009 at 16:57 Dominic White says:
Alright, let’s get off the horrible piracy issue for a minute, and into a tangential issue – it has been noted that the Day-1 reviews have been knocking points off (quite significant numbers, in some places) for technical issues.
If these technical issues are fixed a week or two later, should the reviews amend and adjust their scores to match the actual state of the product, or should they stick to their guns in order to punish the studio for releasing something with bugs?
I’m firmly in the former group, but there seem to be a lot of people who believe that once a review has been written, that it should be set in stone. What side do you fall on?
19/04/2009 at 17:09 JKjoker says:
@theleif : the GPG dudes can say whatever they want and change what they said three times a day, the fact is they released a multiplayer only game (that includes an afterthought single player “training” mode) with a broken multiplayer component, weeeeeeeee, lets line up to kiss and bow to them.
19/04/2009 at 17:34 dsmart says:
@theleif
The perspective of your post seemed to indicate that you worked from them. I just noticed that you were doing a cut and paste job without actually indicating such. Hence the confusion.
btw, nobody here is saying they’re good, bad or ugly. And I don’t see anyone making any such personal attacks. It has all been about the game itself afaik.
19/04/2009 at 17:38 Rich_P says:
@Dominic: PC gaming sites should definitely have running reviews for patched games and MMOs. If the devs work their assess off to genuinely improve and fix a game, they should at least get a fair shake. For example, MMOs significantly change, for better or worse, if they survive long enough, perhaps negating the original review. Reviews and purchases don’t have to be made at release and then suddenly stop.
As more publishers and studios follow the “games as service” model preached by Valve, these “set in stone” reviews will become even less relevant. Right now, I vastly prefer the more informal “wot I think” and AARs and news updates found on RPS, one of the few sites I’ve found that actually does rolling reviews.
19/04/2009 at 17:53 theleif says:
@JKjoker
I can’t see how me writing that they admit to have borked up the launch make me an asskisser. Anyway, you are one of the few persons commenting on the actual issue: the launch of a multiplayer-centric game with serious network issues. The rest of the posts are mostly unrelated rant. And, as i understand it, the netcode is actually stardocks and not GPG:s. I believe they are using the “impulse reaktor” netcode.
@Dominic White
I agree. I know IGN plans to do a re-review. Unfortunally, it probably won’t show up on the metacricics page.
19/04/2009 at 17:57 theleif says:
@Ah, sorry about that. I’m not good with html tags, so i didnt use them. It was a quote from Brad Wardell on the stardock forum.
19/04/2009 at 18:00 theleif says:
Should have been: @dsmart
19/04/2009 at 18:44 DK says:
@Myros: “Maybe I’m misunderstanding something in the devs comments but …”
They can differentiate, because only legit users get the update, because it’s only availible via Impulse (for which you need a legit CD Key) – old version game, pirates – new version game, legit.
19/04/2009 at 19:03 Rich_P says:
I can’t speak for Demigod, but Sins of a Solar Empire doesn’t have DRM. You need a valid CD key to receive updates and access the servers, which makes sense. But there’s no restriction on playing, installing, or reselling the game as you purchased it on the original disc. The only thing being managed is your right to connect to someone else’s server.
19/04/2009 at 19:51 theleif says:
@Rich_P
But when you register the game on impulse to get the update, you bind your serial to your account, don’t you? And, having to do that to get patches, is a form of Digital Rights Managemet.
19/04/2009 at 22:07 Psychopomp says:
ITT:Everyone knows everything ever, about both the hypothetical and the factual.
Y’know, believe it or not, a company has the right to at least *try* to protect their product. Whether or not DRM works is not a valid point of contention. Does it REALLY fucking inconvience you THAT fucking much to register a CD-Key to get your patches?
Also, I brought up how long the devs worked, merely to show that the devs didn’t just release a broken game. They saw the problem, and they fixed it.
Works fine now, I just spent five hours playing the game.
You know what else has shitty netcode? Source. No one damns Valve for facestabs, lagging hit boxes, shooting someone in the chest and getting a headshot, ect. ect.
Why? Team Fortress 2 is an amazing game despite netcode problems.
Same with Demigod, and I stand by that.
19/04/2009 at 23:22 Ixtab says:
Well this whole debacle may increase awareness and raise sales. I wasn’t really going to buy this before because, although I’d heard about it, it had mainly slipped under my radar. This has brought it to my attention more and it sounds like I may enjoy it. Now I think I shall give it maybe about a week to fix stuffs and then I’ll probably get it.
Also I’d like to agree with Persus-9 that a major problem with the piracy debate (not piracy, the arguments surrounding it) is people judging it based on different moral standards. And it’s very difficult to convince someone that their moral standard is inferior to yours.
20/04/2009 at 00:03 Down Rodeo says:
I might buy this. In fact, I still need to buy SoaSE (ohnoes, I feel bad for not having done so already). I’m the type who’s too afraid of strategy to go online but I do like massive stompy things. And having used Impluse; it’s not bad. For a while it mucked around with my game keys but meh.
20/04/2009 at 01:15 JKjoker says:
@Psychopomp: you know whats easier than registering to patch the game ? not needing to patch the game
the most problematic thing about the Stardock/Steam protection schemes is that they encourage the “release beta crap, patch later” tactic since you want to enforce the registration and you can get real time info from your “players” (AKA “betatesters”) plus you can gather priceless marketing data at the same time for FREE! and they don’t even get a choice not to send you that info or even know what you are gathering (programs running, size of porn collection, chat logs, email backups, explorer history, who knows!!)……… Sweet!
20/04/2009 at 07:44 Tei says:
“programs running, size of porn collection, chat logs, email backups, explorer history, who knows!!”
Thats conspiracytheoricrafting for the sake of conspiracytheoricrafting. You can say *any* program that call home and use a unknom protocol could do as you say. I think is better to assume that these programs only send the information that say that send, and then have some dude somewhere run a tiny tcpdump program to check.
Maybe santaclaus is stealing childrens, “you don’t know!”.
20/04/2009 at 17:05 suibhne says:
@Tei: “DRM !== copy protection. A DRM system is a tool to extend the control of the author over the product, removing freedom from the owner of the copy. A copy protection system, is just a system to make a copy limited to one user, and stop him from making copys that work for other people.”
No. Copy-protection = DRM = “digital rights management” (where reproduction is a right being managed). There are many forms of DRM, some which are relatively consumer-friendly and others which are very anti-consumer, but *all* modern copy-protection is DRM – right down to the simple disc-in-drive check. (You could make the argument that the old-school manual check a la Loom or Prince of Persia is more “analog” rights management, tho. ;) )
You can use whatever private terminology you’d like, and I’m not trying to tell you how to define things in your own head. The important thing is to recognize, as Derek pointed out, that all modern copy-protection tech is a form of DRM.
21/04/2009 at 07:19 Sourlout says:
One thing that has been really, really bugging me is the whole “they only have themselves to blame since they didn’t use DRM” statement that has been wildly proclaimed here.
Let me just ask one simple question. Are there pirated copies of DRM-protected games? To the same extent? Spore, Mass Effect, Bioshock all have DRM and all have been pirated. So then, would have DRM prevented this?
No.
When a pirate downloads a game off of the internet, it comes working. (For the most part) The DRM has already been cleaned out of it. That is why its a pirated copy. So then, with regards to the install limit of that Spore or Mass Effect has, who is more effected, the pirate or the customer. The pirate has a game without the install limit, the customer does not.
If Demigod came with DRM, would it have prevented this? You have got to be kidding yourself if you think it would have.
Also, the amount of people talking about this who didn’t rtfa is crazy. There is a cd-key. You have to be registered to get patches or to play online. The problems were caused by having over 100,000 computers checking for updates when they expected 50,000. So why don’t all those people asking why they didn’t use CD-Keys go rtfa…
21/04/2009 at 16:54 plant42 says:
The people I know who pirated this game did so because it isn’t that good.
A few hours in single player and you notice it has a steep learning curve, zero tutorial, no single-player campaign/story a la Warcraft or Starcraft, uninspired animation and level design, few characters to select from (very few useful characters), shallow character advancement/items and rapidly starts to feel like a repetitive clickfest. Note I haven’t even mentioned the multiplayer and netcode issues they should be able to fix in a few weeks.
In short, it’s a derivative RTS, and not worth $40. Test drive it and uninstall.
21/04/2009 at 16:57 Jim Rossignol says:
It really isn’t.
23/04/2009 at 00:36 syrion says:
On the contrary, I found that it has a relatively easy learning curve. There’s no tutorial, but a few games against easy AI will teach you the basics of playing. All eight demigods are useful in different ways; none of them dominate, and all of them can contribute to a successful team. Each demigod has several viable builds which can change your playing style a great deal.
23/04/2009 at 00:46 Serondal says:
It is like a mod without a game O.o Did they charge full price for Red Orchestra when it came out or was it a budget title as this one should have been? I dare say there was more content in Red Orchestra than there was in DemiGod at that.
There is no learning curve, no tutorial is needed. Once you play the game a few times you know pretty much everything you need to know. A few more times you’ve seen all there is to see (unless they add more)
So unless you just love this exact Genre it is not going to be for you. Just like if you don’t LOVE WW2 eastern from FPS shooters you’re not going to play Red Orchestra for very long.
26/04/2009 at 01:20 Murphious says:
So in summation, wait 2 months after a game is released. Read up on the ‘official’ game forum about any complaints/praise. See if all patches fixing problems have been released. Then if you decided you may like this game, check prices to see if it has dropped to at least 2/3rds of MSRP. If not, wait another couple of months or until summertime sales begin…