Despite Piracy Worries, Stardock's Demigod Did Quite Well On The Sales Front
from the not-so-bad... dept
While many people falsely claimed that the server troubles Stardock dealt with recently, due to unauthorized copies of its new game Demigod effectively pinging its servers, showed how Stardock's trusting (no DRM) model doesn't work, that was clearly incorrect. Even throughout the stories last week, the execs at Stardock didn't seem particularly upset or worried about the fact that so many unauthorized copies were out there -- but about getting the servers set up properly to handle the load. And, now, as reader Christopher Chapman points out, Demigod has debuted as the number 3 best selling PC game, suggesting (yet again) that you can get plenty of sales even when you don't treat your customers like criminals.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: demigod, piracy, sales, video games
Companies: stardock
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But...
At least thats what the various industries tell the media, who parrot it verbatim and accept all claims at face value. Your "proof" is obviously false, and can never happen with a REAL games publisher, or work on any larger scale.
/sarcasm off
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Well I know some of my friends pirate games just to try them out, and will buy them 99% of the time if they like it
A large portion of pirates don't even play the game, listen to the music, etc. They're just counting coup. "I have 600 movies! How many do you have?"
The odd thing is that plenty of them will buy the damn thing in order to be able to offer it up.
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Initial reaction
I'm guessing a lot of people downloaded it to see if they liked it, because they were interested at first but not totally sold and then after trying it they either stopped playing or bought a copy.
Of course, there are plenty of people who continue to play illegally, but they will always try to get around the security measures.
My guess is that the ratio of people playing illegal copies on their servers has diminished quite a lot since the launch.
Companies should make it as easy as possible to go from an illegal copy of a game to the paid copy (by offering an almost complete version of the game and showing a "Buy it" button for example).
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Re: Initial reaction
I hate being classified into this group, but you're correct.
Back in the day, I used cracked software to try it out as 30 days usually isn't enough time to familiarize one to all the features. Demo? Really? Maybe for a car, but not for software like Photoshop.
If I like it, I buy it. If I don't, no harm done. I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
This notion we have to buy to offer an opinion about the content is crap and I'd wish companies would stop doing it.
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game wasnt' worth the money
Does the game have potential though? Absolutely.
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Re: game wasnt' worth the money
I know I bought mine off of Impulse...
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It doesn't invalidate the piracy != lost sales idea at but I did think it was worth mentioning.
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This game is now on Steam.
www.taleworlds.com Mount & Blade. Very good game, and I must say I like the company. I just wish it were multiplayer. (The aforementioned demo is still available, too.)
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DAMN RIGHT
Well said.
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WoW worked
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Re: WoW worked
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I'm not really a big pirater - but I've downloaded stuff before.
Every single game I play - I paid for. Many after playing it for a bit.
Actually, I've bought very very few games that I hadn't tried at a friend's house or otherwise. I might venture a purchase on 20% of games, if that. The other 80% I've tried before I bought them.
And with all of the stuff out there now, I almost insist on it. I don't care how pretty the words sound on the back of the box, or what write-ups it gets... I've bought based on reviews and descriptions on the box and have been unhappy more often than not.
Not that those games aren't good - just maybe not what I personally like.
But if I try them - and like them - regardless of how I 'tried' the game, I'll buy it if I like it.
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