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One has to feel for Stardock, they’ve got a great anti-DRM stance, have good customer support and maintain a pretty open position on their forums. Unfortunately, the launch of Demigod has been a disaster, and it’s due to a combination of relatively unrelated factors, the disastrous combination of which would be difficult to predict in advance:
1. Demigod is a multiplayer-focussed game
2. The game phones home to the server on opening, to check for updates
3. Gamestop release the game 4-days early
4. The servers aren’t really ready for customers ahead of the launch date
5. More than 100,000 pirates try to play the game, ahead of, and after the launch date
6. Stardock did not anticipate a flood of users on launch, but instead planned on a steady increase in users (as this is what happened with Sins)
7. Games reviews will most likely occur in advance of the launch date, up to a few days later
You might be getting the idea on what the likely outcome is.
So, because of an unfortunate programming choice (why phone home for updates on application launch?), and the sheer volume of pirates grabbing the game at day zero (thanks to Gamestop going out early), the limited Stardock server infrastructure caved in, in what was effectively an ‘own-goal’ DOS attack.
This left all the legitimate customers with a barely functional multiplayer game, lots of fan rage on the official forums, and some review sites then gave the game a low score (Gamespot 6.5 for instance) because of the unplayable state.
Oh dear.
Stardock have been working frantically to fix the problem, and it’s looking promising right now that we’ll have a working Demigod game perhaps as soon as today. I really feel for them, and I hope people don’t overlook what is shaping up to be a very good DOTA-style game.
The debacle also brings reviews into question. How do you review a mp game at the day of launch? Gamespot, to their credit, have indicated they will revisit the game sometime soon and give it another chance. 1up have refused to review the game until today, giving Stardock a second chance. Will other review sites be so kind? Should they? I’d be pretty annoyed if I read a glowing review of a game that didn’t work when I fired it up… yet the gameplay will improve dramitically over the coming days, but probably after the ‘review window’ has closed and metacritic is an unforgiving place.
I predict that some will try and use this incident as an excuse to push DRM agendas further, but really, the blame lies partly with Stardock for bad networking choices and poor advance planning of their server loads, and mainly with Gamestop breaking the street date and causing the kafuffle in the first place. Had pirates only gotten their hands on the game at launch, Stardock most likely would have been able to direct legitimate users to a different update/login/mp server. Even if Stardock had had DRM in the game, it would have been cracked well before the official launch date.
You can be sure Gamestop doesn’t care 
- Scoobs
Comments are welcome RIGHT HERE
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