Demigod, Stardock and Gas Powered Games’ latest game, was released by GameStop on April 9th (five days early).
Within a day the game became unplayable for many users because of the number of connections established with Stardock’s multiplayer servers. This is a very big problem for a game that relies so much on it’s multiplayer component.
Why was the game unplayable? There are a number of issues that I can think of that caused this.
The first is Stardock’s DRM philosophy. Simply put Stardock’s position on DRM in games is that no matter what DRM system a company comes up with pirates will be able to crack it and that in the end DRM systems only hurt the legitimate customers (one need only look at EA’s initial draconian measures with Spore). Because of this, and perhaps the early release so close to the weekend, pirates were able to get a hold of the game in near record speed and Stardock’s employees were all off for two days and thus unable to fix the issue.
Indeed Stardock reported that of the 100,000 connections established with their servers only 18,000 were from legitimate retail copies. The rest were pirated copies. Apparently Stardock never conceived of the possibility that so many connections would be established with their update and multiplayer servers and thus the servers did not have enough resources to deal with the large number of people online.
I do not believe that the lack of DRM on Demigod caused this issue. In fact it appears as if the game was designed to connect to Stardock’s servers even if you were playing the game in offline mode. It is at start up that the game connects to the server to automatically check to see if your version of the game is the latest version. Ironically with so many connections established even the pirates were having an issue playing “their” game.
I have always questioned the logic of having a non-MMO game automatically check for updates. While it adds an extra step I would much rather have to look for patches on Fileplanet.com or click on an in game button conveniently labeled “Check for Updates” than take the risk of this sort of thing happening to me. It appears obvious to me that because the game automatically checks for updates the illegitimate users were having a major impact on the people that actually paid for the game.
When I first read about Stardock and their hit game Sins of a Solar Empire I was very excited that a developer finally agreed with me that DRM is not the way to deal with piracy. This case has not changed my belief but it has certainly made me examine ways to limit the effect of piracy on the consumers and promote the purchasing of one’s product. I think Stardock has hit on the first part of this equation but the automatic update check probably negated it. That first part being that you must have a account with Stardock to play the game online and receive game updates. Without the automatic updates I think that there would have been no impact on legitimate consumers at all.
The other part I think can be found in Steam’s digital distribution service. Steam allows the purchasing and updating of games all from a simple program, but you must have an account in order to access your games. Ideally it would be great if all the developer’s could get on board with Steam but realistically, human nature being what it is, that would give Steam far too much power over the future of the entertainment industry’s distribution system.
I think the solution to any game developer’s fear of piracy is to work with companies that provide digital distribution – such as steam – instead of slapping harsh and often invasive DRM on the legitimate consumers.
