Calm down guys.

In this case - downloading and using copyrighted software - piracy, guilt and the secerity of the crime - is defined only by a small but powerful group of lobbyists (and their sponsors).

I think that no one in this forum (or in the entire websphere) has never violated a copyright regarding music. Right now - depending on the respective countries laws - it is illegal to download or distribute songs in mp3 format. See those ridiculous law suits in the USA.

If I remember correctly, in Australia it's even illegal to perform copyrighted music without a license. Singing "Happy Birthday" in a public place constituted a violation of copyright laws (yep, that song is copyrighted).

Everyone agrees that this is ridiculous and the whole right/wrong discussion regarding software - games in our case - isn't that far from it.

Just remember that even though people (kids mostly) violate the law and potentially hurt developers and copyright holders, that doesn't put them on par with shoplifters, robbers, murderers, rapists and others. And the damage they allegedly do is pure fiction, too: Just because if 100.000 people downloaded this game doesn't mean that they caused 3.000.000$ worth of financial damage, even though some company lawyers insist they do. Without p2p or friends with a cd-burner, it would only mean that 100.000 less people would even look at that software.

So, the financial damage caused by private pirated copies is mostly guesswork. In the case of Demigod however, it hurt it's review score and thus potentially it's real revenues, which is tragic but not the norm.

Some people however - and that was the major point of this post - are so convinced by the game that they buy it, even though they already "stole" it.
And why ? Because of a mix of respect, gratefulness and incentive. Which is a way better business model than sue-the-crap-out-of-14-year-olds.

Did I say what country it was in?  No, you did.  I just said I read about it and didn't mention a single thing regarding country...lol.  The only "fail" is your inability to present a valid argument.

Anything else from the peanut gallery?

"And the damage they allegedly do is pure fiction, too"

That's malarky.  They do cause the industry damage.  You can't look at 85% piracy rates and pretend they aren't having an adverse effect on the gaming industry.  Nobody will make the case that all 85% of those theives equal sales, but do you honestly think if piracy was impossible all those people would just quit playing pc games?  No, and to suggest otherwise is intellectually dishonest.  Just because you can't attach a cold hard number to it, doesn't mean common sense can't tell you a bit about what's going on.

And personally, I wish they would throw lawsuits at those "14 year olds"...what kind of society are we in where we turn a blind eye to people  stealing other people's work?

It's sickening...and the worse part about it is if you listen to these theives they actually pretend like they have an entitlement to do it...like they are owed these games and only if they like them they will pony up.  Ridiculous.

Indoctrination and revenge has zero to do with anything...it's called enforcement of the law and protecting people's intellectual property and interests.

I prefer societies that protect good hard working honest people and their efforts in creating things, not the people ripping them off.

Stardock clearly didn't pay gamespot off like most publishers do. Hince the rating. 

Not to mention they save about $100.000 by NOT using DRM...which would be cracked anyway. And with Hamachi out and working like a charm, they really have to do something epic to make people buy their game. And they did

A solution for piracy has been around since the beginning of time. Authentication servers. The industry itself needs to regulate prices, distribution etc in order for piracy not to be as popular as it is.

Authentication servers is not THE answer to everything, but it is the answer to online multiplay. There's few singleplayer games coming out to the PC platform nowadays - a direct consequence of piracy - but as a multiplayer platform the PC is still king.

The sole reason that I bought Demigod was that it was available as digital distribution on a FAST connection (maxed my connection out anyway). So from the moment I installed Impulse till I was playing something like 15 minutes went by. This is very good imo. Downloading from The Piratebay would have taken alot longer probably.

The premier weapon the devs have to combat piracy should be authentication of serial key, and online statistics and leagues. Once this is in place, match-making is fixed and clan-support is added, nobodys gonna play a pirated version on some hamachi-lan.

Edit: On one side I support piracy as a try-before-you-buy solution to all the pissass games people are charging money for, on the other hand I wish it didn't exist. Quality of games would probably be higher, though prices would be higher as well, but I don't care about prices at all. What I hate is paying money to undeserving people who publish rubbish games. If I only could have paid them in bullets...

Like I said, they aren't without blame, but the effect of over 100,000 theives trying to connect on day 1 inflammed the situation even worse, making the online play almost broken the first few day as the servers were unresponsive.

Without those 100,000+ thieves, day 1 would have been smoother (albiet not perfect, but much better).  There is no denying this, and therefore the only conclusion is pirates *did* in fact have a negative effect on the game and potentially attributed to lower review scores.

The difference would have been:

"Great game with some serious technical issues"

Intead of:

"If you're interested in throwing down cash for a beta and maybe getting in some practice before things get smoothed out, go ahead and bump that score up a letter grade. Anybody else should find something else to do until then."

That's not what happened anyways...gamestop released the game early and they wre forced to release the game before the "day 0" patch.

Anyways, again, not saying they are without blame, and not saying had they fixed stuff prior to release it would have went better regardless.  The bottom line is you can not escape the fact the pirates played a role in the release debacle.  To say they did not have any negative effects on this game is not being honest.

That's fine, but the only "scewed perspective" is pretending 100,000+ pirates jumping on the game day one didn't have a negative effect. 

I agree with you that they (GPG, Stardock) made major mistakes too, but to ignore this and pretend the theives didn't contribute is flat out intellectual dishonesty.