Demigod piracy through the roof.

[Tiber Septim]

Poor Demigod had a rocky launch. Mainly because there were too many people trying to play the game. And why were there too many people? Because there were five pirates for every paying customer.




In a post on the game's forums, Stardock's Brad Wardell has revealed that the game's servers have been flooded with users trying to play the game. More users than they would have anticipated going by sales, as Wardell says internal data shows that while the game has been purchased by 18,000 people, there have been around 120,000 people trying to play the game over the past week.

So, yes, mostly pirated copies. Come on PC gamers. You wonder why companies decide to saddle you with crap like SecuROM, regardless of how ineffective and unpopular it is? It's because of statistics like that.

Source

It's so depressing to read things like this.
Stardock are good publishers, they force virtually no DRM on their games.
GPG are great devs, their games might be a bit buggy (Supreme Commander), but they support their games for quite a while after release and the games themselves are really good.

It's sad to see them losing so many sales because people are too cheap to lay down $50 on a game they can get countless hours of enjoyment from.

[Mcninjaguy]

and paying $50 is not like apying that for a limited edition movie set or something where you watch it for 3 hours or so and then you're done with for 6 months

[Tiber Septim]

Exactly.
Lots of people pay $15 -$30 to go see a movie. Movie goes for ~3 hours, you walk out, that's it.

But paying $50 for a game (quite a good one too) that you can enjoy as much or as little as you want, at any time you want is too much too ask.
I just don't understand the thought process, it's like some people feel they are entitled to get everything for free.

It's a good thing I'm not a game developer/publisher. I would have created something far worse than DRM.

[RockmasteR]

18.000 vs 120.000 is a very scary indeed!!!
I'm very sad that there are lots and lots of pirate sites out there
and with that fast download rate people don't have a problem to download as many pirated games as they like
that's why I have an entry level PC
games vs hardware, games wins

[csc2000e]

Originally Posted by Tiber Septim

Exactly.
Lots of people pay $15 -$30 to go see a movie. Movie goes for ~3 hours, you walk out, that's it.

But paying $50 for a game (quite a good one too) that you can enjoy as much or as little as you want, at any time you want is too much too ask.
I just don't understand the thought process, it's like some people feel they are entitled to get everything for free.

It's a good thing I'm not a game developer/publisher. I would have created something far worse than DRM.

I can't even imagine something worse than DRM.
But seriously, this pirating crap has to stop. It really hurts the honest customer. Also, if I understand this correctly, there wasn't any DRM on the game. Does that include a CD key?

[Mcninjaguy]

Oblivion had no DRM or CD key it was an unlocked game essentially

[csc2000e]

So is the problem with Demigod the fact that it can be downloaded? Versus Oblivion which probably was distributed digitally back when it came out?

[Mcninjaguy]

no I think Steam wasn't too big a couple years back it just started getting reall big around 2007 because other game publishers were allowing their games to be sold in Steam.

Oblivion was sold mostly via retail stores.
Demigod I think just has no DRM protection I could be wrong. or its easy to crack. Bad pirates!

[Tiber Septim]

Don't understand how Oblivion came into this, but okay!

Yep, Demigod has no DRM. Online activation is optional, just allows you to download the updates.
To play, all you need is a CD-Key. But virtually every game has that.

I agree though, piracy hurts the honest customer.
Pirates get a free game with none of the hassle, publishers have to force DRM on their games to protect them, but they get cracked anyway.
Honest customer ends up paying a high price for the game and having to deal with the DRM.

I don't think digital distribution has much of an impact on how much a game is pirated. All it takes is for one person to buy a copy, then create a torrent of it for millions worldwide to download.

[Mcninjaguy]

Piracy will never go away.

its a couple things to bear in mind

-some people hate paying for anything
-economic status of people
-People's mindset of what we should be sharing
-Not wanting to give back to the Publisher and Devlopment team (take! Take! TAKE!!)
piracy is a good way to make a profit by sending it with malware (key loggers, worms, trojans, etc)
-major thing is if its a crappy game or not sure if they want to buy it they might want to test it out via a pirated copy of the game

I'm sure there's probably a couple more reasons but piracy will be rampant for the our lives until people get past certain things

[5NIPER_WOLF]

SPORE had THE MOST downloads in game piracy history, with over 2 million MORE than what was even MADE! and people pirated the game BEFORE it was even released!

Only game I have ever downloaded sort of legitimately StarCraft because I reached the install limit, and bought the game twice (one regular version the other Battle Chest, so it's like 3 times)

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Also you for people who haven't, you can read my post on piracy and how it effects other people than the developers and producers Why 'inexpensive' can still mean 'bootleg'

[Zealex]

Yeah, I heard spore was one pirated thing :o. And what Tiber said, Why waste money at the movies or buy a movie, thats just one time. I only take movies from my library no point in buying it cause im going to only see it once. Games last longer and if there expensive just wait a bit for it to go down a bit or buy a used one if the game is able to be played as used.

[5NIPER_WOLF]

But the pirater's have some dignity, in my opinion at least. DEViANCE is a very renowned group of crackers, some of whom I personally know, and they state in all of their .nfo files that they buy all their games and highly suggest doing so and state that they should own the game before downloading their stuff. Razor 1911, another renowned cracker also does the same.

There are others like DopeMan who don't say anything about what they upload.

[RockmasteR]

what is the use of downloading "their stuff" if you already have the original copy?
it's only an excuse!
maybe these teams are doing this for fun! maybe they do buy original copies
but I think they know that millions are downloading their pirated games and they are harming the game publishers and makers

[5NIPER_WOLF]

They are doing it for fun, but the use of downloading games is pretty much explained in another one of my posts

Originally Posted by 5NIPER_WOLF

Only game I have ever downloaded sort of legitimately StarCraft because I reached the install limit, and bought the game twice (one regular version the other Battle Chest, so it's like 3 times)

And that is just one game that I have reached DRM limits for.

What about free games? if you download free games that does not hurt anyone except the developer's download statistics.

[Tiber Septim]

I don't recall Starcraft having an install limit, Google brings up nothing and I've installed it many many times over the years.

Free games don't really count. The developer isn't really running a business and relying on people purchasing the software to make a living.
Also, a lot of free games use some sort of advertising to make their income, so pirated or not they still make money.

[5NIPER_WOLF]

Well I installed StarCraft when it came out on my very second computer, I had it for years and years until I wanted to play it again on my third system, my mother bought the game for me and I had it for about 2 years when I needed to do a reformat and when I tried to install it said something like "This game is already installed another computer" or "This CD key is already registered to a different computer" so I had to buy it again, I got the BattleChest and then after about 2 or 3 years I had to reformat again and lo and behold the same error.

[Mcninjaguy]

maybe one of your friends "borrowed" your CD key

[5NIPER_WOLF]

No one played StarCraft back then that I knew