Demigod Rendered Unplayable Thanks to Pirates

Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo April 17th, 2009 at 8:41 AM    


 
Graphical representation of Demigod's Servers Crashing

Perhaps it's a bit ironic, perhaps a bit fitting, but on the day the Pirate Bay Trial Guitly Verdict was handed down Gas Powered Games has addressed some of the issues plaguing Demigod.  If you've picked up the game recently and tried to play online, you may have noticed that...well it's not working.  At least not very well.  The reason behind this?  Pirates - and I don't mean the Somalian kind.

According to the latest Demigod journal post, the game is currently seeing about 120,000 connections.  Gas Powered games had estimated about 50,000 at launch.  The problem here is over 100,000 of those connections are via pirated copies of the game.  That's right, the ratio of warez'd copies of the game to legitimate users is 5 to 1.  

Apparently it's not an easy fix either, and despite knowing all those pirated users, Gas Powered games is unable to simply "block" them from utilizing their online infrastructure.
 

 So anyway, we spent a lot of time today  trying to isolate out the warez users from the legitimate users (it would require a lot of surgery to actually break them and even if we did, there’d be no friendly “ha ha pirate” message which would result in people just saying the game is buggy).  Mind you, the game makes relatively few server calls, it’s just the sheer number of people.

 Their solution is to shuffle the warez'd users to one set of servers while the legitimate users will be on another set.  That's pretty kind of them to keep supporting the illegal users, but  I'd think they could come up with a more...permanent solution.

We'll be bringing you a review and info on exactly what the co-op modes are in Demigod sometime in the near future, but for now we'll let all this technical crap be battled out.  Somehow I get that mental picture from the beginning of Monty Python's Meaning of Life - the office Pirate Ship Battle.  

Source: Link

 Tags: pc demigod politics


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7 Total Reader Comments

TheReaperCooL at 05:46 AM on 4.17.2009
I have some friends who have bought the game, and they say the game uses GPG or what, that's the hosting service and it doesn't work, can't connect and stuff. I don't think so that this is the work of warez, because Supreme Commander STILL doesn't work, and they didn't try to fix it. So BEFORE they complain, they should make the game better, period.
 
Dodomaster at 06:28 AM on 4.17.2009
SupCom uses different servers, maybe the same client but not the same servers mate.
 
roland at 06:42 AM on 4.17.2009


Not quite sure what your friend's difficulty was. I played SupCom on the official servers for about a year without difficulty (once I upgraded my rig ).
 
TheReaperCooL at 06:48 AM on 4.17.2009
Well I don't know then. They said it uses the same technique and it didn't work for them. Personally I don't play SupCom, so I dunno
 
phrozenfearz at 08:33 AM on 4.17.2009
And they were so optimistic regarding the scourge of piracy...
 
Rogue_hunter at 03:52 PM on 4.17.2009
I believe the title should be changed to "Demigod Rendered Unplayable TO Pirates." I'll have to find the link (don't hold your breath, I'm pretty lazy, it might not happen), but there was a day one update for officially registered copies that tells them the proper servers for the multiplayer. The pirated copies can't download the update, and they use the old beta servers. An update for the beta servers basically made it to where any games played on them would be slowed to a crawl fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, this will tell other PC publishers that draconian DRM is the best solution, even though that stuff is still cracked quite easily and only punishes the legitimate purchasers.
 
seshat at 05:36 PM on 4.17.2009
Is that cow in the picture the Tauren hero from DoTA? Wow they want to make sure they stay close to the source material!

Good memories, I should find my copy of Warcraft and relieve some multiplayer Dota tonight
 


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