Did you copy-paste his copy of Demigod onto your machine (or a pirated version)? If so, you don't have the version information and sometimes it won't download from impulse corrrectly. Try deleting and redownloading the entire game again. If you still have an issue, you can delete the game from your .impulsereactor properties. Sometimes that fixes things.

You should contact support if this persists.

Impulse is supposed to automatically update every game you have installed, but you should check its preferences anyway to make sure of that. Also, it seems to me as a problem with Impulse, not the actual game.

You should try uninistalling Demigod AND Impulse.

He didn't suggest piracy, he suggested copying AFTER buying the game.  Impulse doesn't really handle that very well.

No. I've hosted Demigod LAN games with my friends and I copy-pasted my Program Files folder to their computer. When they come back after a new update has been released, Impulse tends to complain and lists a version # of 0.00 and doesn't know how to update properly. I was assuming you were having an issue like that since a friend gave you a coupon I imagined he had played a few LANs with you so that's how you initially "acquired" your copy of demigod.

However, for some reason you have a version from the future. The current most up-to-date version is 1.20.147.

If you are computer literate, this solution worked for me on Vista with another game:

Go to C:\Users\<userName>\AppData\Roaming\Stardock\Impulse\RegistrationsCache.xml

on my XP machine it was C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Stardock\Impulse\data\ImpulseNow_installed.xml

Find the tag that looks like: <Name>Demigod</Name>

Scroll down until you see:

      <Ver>
        <Major>1</Major>
        <Minor>20</Minor>
        <Revision>147</Revision>
      </Ver>

Make sure that is correct.

A few more lines down you should see:

<InstalledVersion>your version number</InstalledVersion>

<UpdateAvailable>false</UpdateAvailable>

<UpdateVersion>1.20.147</UpdateVersion>

Make sure your UpdateVersion is 1.20.147 (not whatever you had) and then make sure your InstalledVersion is as well.

Just changing the InstalledVersion to 1.20.147 should trick ImpulseReactor into thinking you have the correct version and enable you to play online. If you get "Critical Error: Desync detected!" You seem to have been "gifted" with a new, unreleased version of demigod.

If that still doesn't work (or you are too scared to try), I suggest that you contact support. I know that they have been tweaking around Impulse Reactor and it's possible your account id has been messed with somehow.