try proxifier

anywhoo Im waiting til i have enough money to buy demigod

That must be it...

Cheers: Snarl

I do have a question for you.  I am in the exact situation as the OP.  I got this off of Demonoid Yesterday.  I am getting it through Impulse as we speak (47% finished! ).  I did the same thing with a number of games: Sins, DOW 1 & 2, Supreme Commander, and a few others.  Basically if I download a game and I'm still playing it after 3 days I buy it (this one was an exception, as was Sins for a number of reasons.  This one took me a day to decide, Sins took 2).  I generally do not bother with demos as I like to see the full game in all its glory to really get a feel if its worth my money.

My question is, what does it really matter whether or not I wait for/try a demo or get it through other means, as long as I pay for it in the end?  I don't promote piracy of games.  not at all.  I only promote spending money wisely.  Make sure you really want something before spending had earned money.  I work very hard, 10-12 hours a day and I don't want to throw it away on something, anything, that I'll only use for a week or 2.

Is what I do really immoral?  Really, I ask in all sincerity.  I will stop doing this if anyone can convince me that it is wrong.

P.S sorry to bring this thread back from the dead.

And thanks to all involved for making such a wonderful game, and providing it without system crippling malware like securom, etc.

I hate demos.  I generally pirate and if i like it I'll buy it.

Demo's usually do not give a good indication of what the game is actually like.

I think the key with reducing piracy is via online account creation and tying that to a value add. That way pirates _want_ to buy the game, if they like it, for that online account. In Demigod's case the value add is online play and most of their piracy to sales converts will likely be for that.

For me this game was a 15 minute download via Giganews using NNTP and not Torrent. The game was rock solid, stable, fun, and the install converted very cleanly to a registered copy when I bought the game through Impulse. I didn't need to download it again from Stardock and I doubt they could deliver it to me as quickly.

I really think companies should look at piracy as an untapped market. Someone who downloads the game is a potential customer. Your product is your marketing opportunity. How do you hook that person into buying a legit copy, what value adds will bring them over? Can you estimate the market? Can you track the conversions into paid customers? In what ways does the scene increase your marketing prescense?

I am not sure Frogboy would state it exatly this way, but I think he feels this way.  I gather he believes people will pirate no matter what and if you offer good enough games with real support and benefits to ownership, some of the pirates will buy the game.  So in other words, don't screw you customers with obtrusive DRM and offer a reason (quality product, patches, DLC and support) that give the try-to-buy crowd a real reason to buy.

This is awful reading.

1) If you want the game at launch date: Buy it
2) If you're interested in the game, but want to make sure that it's worth the money, wait for the reviews to tick in or wait for a demo.

I was anxiously awaiting the new Mazda6 to hits the Mazda dealers, but breaking in 2 days before they were in the show room and taking it for a ride, really isn't justified by buying the car in the end. It's just sheer idiocy. (The example was meant solely for descriptive purposes, don't start a "pirating software isn't stealing physical items" thing on me ).

If you're interested in a product you have to abide by the terms of the producers. Justifying it with "they should have provided a demo", "the item isn't available for my country yet" or the likes is the most miserable justifications I've heard in a while.

What the poster of this thread needs to consider is this: if a pirated version of Demigod wasn't available, would he/she have abandoned getting the game? Hardly.

I think this is a component to the piracy problem that a lot of developers just don't address. There is so much garbage released, games that never get more than a beta patch, software that is barely playable (or just not at all) on release days and all of them seem to charge a similar price despite the production quality varying hugely.  I am not supporting piracy by any means, but I can see why people would resort to it. And what is the typical response from developers when a game remains "broken", if there is a response at all, well we didn't sell enough to devote our employees to fix it, or we'll get to it while we finish our next cash cow we hope you will all buy because, after all, sub-par products has become acceptable in the industry.  Almost everything else I buy, if its crap out of the box, it goes back into the box and back to the store. Unfortunately, bad games, you're stuck with if you actually buy it from the get go.

Unfortunately, there was something about Demigod that didn't interest me or the friends and family I play with, and I am not so bored that I need to steal games I am not interested in, and have the money to buy the ones I am interested in which already take up plenty of my free-time. I am more interested in what Stardock is attempting to do as a company and their version of digital distribution than anything else.

No point convincing a pirate, they are to full of them self to understand what they are doing in stealing.

Wooo so special i can dl a game woooooo.

The only good pirate (including those who justify 'trying out a game before purchasing' by using torrents, not demos) is a pirate who has been hurtled into outer space on a missle bound for Saturn; with no space suit.

The funny thing is that is a great example. Apply that to anything else.

Even on a console game...yeah you can go rent it for $7 or whatever to try it before you buy it but you still have to pay some cash to do that. 

Ill be honest I do not agree with people who pirate download games or movies. You can try to justify it in all the ways you want but its plain and simple just not right. Your interested in a game? Then read about it. Go to forums and ask questions about it. Go to gaming websites and watch movies of it. You can get enough information to make a decision without having to pirate a copy.

Oh dont take the hardcore one side of the line or other stance though. In my thread above Im not trying to say Im all high and mighty and have never stolen anything. Sure when I was about 9 I stole a couple packs of baseball cards. Yeah I left the grocery store once and realized they forgot to ring up the dog food I had on bottom of cart and I didnt go back in. Yeah yeah yeah.

But in this case I disagree in that people try ot make it sound like they are all divine and all "I pirated the game and then bought it later...I only pirated it though because there was no demo...but I needed to see if it ran on my system ok so I pirated it...". 

Those are just lame excuses to try to justify taking something they are not supposed to. You can do your research and read and watch videos of the game. Ask question on the forums etc. That will give you more then enough information to make a proper decision without having to pirate it.

The problem with taking the moral ground like this is that it doesn't work. I mean, look at MP3 downloads. The entire MP3 format is popular because people were pirating music on Napster. People do it today via torrents and 5 years from now it'll be another distribution format. Most everyone downloads music and these same people would never steal a physical CD from a store shelf.

But they do it with games, music or movies because it's digital and they all rationalize it "well, I never would've bought it anyway and it's not like I'm diminishing anything by making a copy, so why not?".

I don't think you can change that and honestly even though people will say "Demigod didn't have a demo, that's why I pirated it" I really really doubt piracy is reduced a whole lot when a game has a demo.