Stardock is taking returns on retail copies and eating the loss. As the above poster said, it helps to do some research on the matter.

But again, your game has to actually not work and you had to have contacted their tech support with your issues.

Lack of modding and good clan support is absolutely killing this game. I expect SC2 (with whatever AoS equiv comes out for that game) to be pretty much the nail in the coffin in this game.

Not to mention League of Legends.

Also there is a ton of client problems, for example yesturday while trying to get a 5v5 started (and later a 4v4) my friends and I were experiencing a ton of problems (crashes, client freeze ups, connectivity issues). It was basically musical chair with crashes.

The game is still very broken, and unfortunately is riding on the same engine as SupCom (which still doesn't work right).

To be fair when the illustrious B.net started out it is to my recollection was acutally a bit worse. I remember having a good laugh with my friends about the complete lack of stability and ability to play. Then there was all of the lag, hacking, and training going on. So why bother playing online Diablo when you can fire up WC/WC2 on a LAN?

Doom started off pretty bad too. Plenty of thrid partys launched Doom lobby software, APCI/EPCI(?) Doom being one, that "worked" some of the time. That was playing at most 3 other people SLIPed to a server or, gasp, connecting to a server on a BBS.

Bottom line is building a lobby/matching service from the ground up is a rocky road at best. If the Internet was an appliance then the problems we see now wouldn't be an issue. But the only thing anyone is shareing in common is protocols. ISPs, backbone providers, and end user hardware all bring complications to the table.

So if your friends can't connect one instant and then can another if you could examine your trace routes to all of your repective hosts I would bet your paths would be different in each case. Load balanacing, QoS, and other traffic shaping protocols all screw with traffic. Then backbone facilities could be routing your traffic on a flapping circuit that doesn't meet the nessesary error load to be considered a problem. Heck, maybe you have a multiplexed packet switch between you and your buddies that causes just enough delay or errors to cause an issue. Who knows, the rabbit hole is fairly deep.

So you think that GPG who put in most of the work into the product and basically made a damn nice game with some pretty good gameplay and while doing so outsourced some of the work of the game engine (seems including the netcode) screwed up their publisher by making the game broken in something that is taken pretty much for granted in other games.  Being an independant studio they probably get a good share of the sales and they probably didn't receive any upfront funding.  So they most likely depend on the sales of the game to recover their investment and make a profit...

I hope no company interested in getting their product published by Stardock is reading that right now.

Sacrificing revenue for principles is so unamerican.

Nonsense, the days of hacking in Diablo 1 were some of the most fun I've ever had.  Some guy entering the game, walking to the fountain in the center of town, then dropping rare items he's creating on the fly from a trainer like some kind of legendary loot fountain.  That same guy town killing any who walks up to grab the items using nova.  Everyone else alt-tabbing out to turn on their own town kill hacks and the battle was on!  Tricking people into coming into town portals to be mobbed on the other side and lose their gear, only to hack a new set onto their bodies.

....sigh, those were the days.

Amen!

Be we (Stardock) will take it back if you can't get it to work for any reason (which includes multiplayer). We don't care if you bought it at retail or over the Internet.

Umm, no. The problem is the p2p system itself. Before throwing rocks at me, please read. P2p is a good system on paper. But in real word, with all sorts of different ISPs, routers and PCs, the thing can go boom in a second, if the right conditions are met. No other p2p RTS game that i know of has support for 10 players at a time. Maybe there is a reson for that. The more people in a p2p game, the more chances are for something to go bad for everyone in the match. The client/server system is superior to p2p in an imperfect world, regarding the type of game. When some user plays on a dial up connection with a 5 year old pc, then it doesn't break the game for anyone in the game. You don't hear about sim speed on client/server games. You only have to worry about your ping to the server and the ability to connect to it. That's all. Not so with a p2p system. The only thing is that client/server system is more expensive to maintain. Blizzard can do this, their servers probably cost an astronomical figure to maintan, but on the other hand they have millions and millions of users. Demigod has only about 100k to care for. So the costs should be much lower. Anyway, the thing is i know that you plan to build a client/server system for Elemental. Maybe you could make Demigod a client/server game, when the infrastructure is ready for Elemental? If they will be enough players left, that is...

Demigod is at it's core a great game, with a lot of potential. It's still has a chance. People are complaining because they LOVE the game, but can't play it without frustrations. If i didn't love the game, i would have sold my copy and never posted here again. I don't think 40 bucks is that much for most of us, in order to make such a big deal because we felt like cheated; and after all, anyone can get a refund. So, it's not about the lost money, it's about the love for the game that we have and the frustration that we can't play it the way is meant to be played.

If you, GPG and SD, want to support this game, in order so the game can flourish and expand it's user base, then you need to do this (imo), in this order:

• SD needs to finish fixing the Raknet code (essentially SD's part on DG's netcode) . Also you need to add some options to the impulse overlay in the game (invite friends to some game, for example). After you have done this, the ball is in GPG's court.

• GPG needs to fix their netcode and make 5v5 games reliable, for all modes of games (custom, panth and skirmish). Fix all the connections problems (in lobby and in game) as much as possible for a p2p game. The clock is ticking, this needs to be done faster. It's the number one priority and you can't expect sales when you have such a broken game. I'm still amazed how this game sold in more than 100k copies, given the bad reputation for unplayable mp and not so much initial publicity/hype to begin with. Maybe this could be a hint for you of how much need is on the market for a game of this type.
  

• Next on GPG's list are mp features that should have been in the game in the first place: rematch (back to lobby) option, group joining, invite friends, etc. I think almost everyone is pissed on GPG for not including such features in a game that's been marketed as a mp centric game, and releasing it with such basic mp functionality. This also needs to be done faster, not by fall or winter. I know that you want to make a Clan Wars DLC, but if you only plan to include only clan support and not the other features that i've told you about, then i suggest not doing it at all: it's only money and time wasted.
  

• Add replays. Good for new players to learn some new things from more advanced players.
  

• Add mods. Give all the tools the community needs and enable in-game auto-downloading of mods. This could potentially boost the game enormously. After all, popular games like CS, DOTA and L4D started as mods.

• Last but not least, add the promised free demigods and maps. I know they can't be too many, but i think 2 dg and 2 maps would be good. It's free (for us), after all.

• And only after this, make a BIG expansion for the game (not standalone), adding a lot more demigods and maps and other community requested features. Advertise the game agressivly, at this point in time.

• Watch the game as it grows.
  

But all of this needs more GPG's implication and dedication. And this is where i have doubts about this game succeeding. This game had a rough start and needs special treatment. No other GPG had this much problems at it's start, afaik...GPG are not very communicative in general and they don't showed in the past much after release support for their games. And this type of game needs badly a form of community feedback, a two way kind of feedback. Right now GPG is silent. For what we know, they started working on SupCom 2 (a very, very bad move imo, because StarCraft 2 won't have mercy on SupCom2's sales) and pushed Demigod aside, instead of concentrating all their effort on this game, that has a lot of potential to make more money in the future. Think about it for a second. Think about al the millions players of DOTA. If DOTA was such a badly designed game, then it wouldn't have all those players. DOTA it's not perfect, far from it, but the core gameplay is unique and DG is the first game that uses it. Soon will be League of Legends. And i bet there'll be others. This is a new game genre, don't miss the opportunity, i think you (GPG and SD) will regret it in the future.

Just like majority over here my opinion is as follows:

- game will go down, in fact, it is going / went down already

- reasons? simple! lack of clan support and major connectivity issues with few other bugs thrown about...

- someone also needs to take a blame - question is who exactly? imho it is GPG who obviously aren't as "pro" as some might think since if they are such disaster of release would never happen... SD is partially to blame too since they indeed did release it in such state...

biggest shame of it all is that actual game design is awesome!

DG is easily one of the best and most original games to come out recently...

Sadly though handful of utter noobs at GPG team failed it...

I would also like to add another thing - not only that this game is "yet another" example of fuked up PC games industry but also another nail in the coffin of PC gaming in general...

RIP

Speaking from Stardock's side, I don't think they should abandon support for Demigod and just move on. As Frogboy said, Stardock is not a typical company/publisher, and a lot of its fan base was earned because they are known to provide extensive support for the games they develop and publish. Simply cutting out on Demigod would erode a lot of that and make its fans and outsiders much more cautious.

When Demigod was just launched, the forums were a mess. And those of us who are familiar with Stardock and how it operates kept on reassuring people that they're not going to turn a blind eye and will try to fix these things. And that's what they've been doing, I don't think anyone can argue with a straight face that they have not.

Cutting out now would be more of a slap in the face to everyone - fans and people with problems alike. Obviously as the publisher, there are limits to how much Stardock can do, and it's normal that as the major issues get taken care of and as Stardock runs out of things they have a say in that they shift focus to their other projects. But there should never, ever, be a case where GPG wants to release content or a patch only to be stopped by Stardock because they decided to not spend any more money on it.

May save Stardock some money in the short run, but it certainly won't do any wonders for their fan base (whether from Demigod or other games).

Well if they do decide to divert funds from this game's continued development and move on, I really hope they consider creating an expansion at some point in time.  This game has all the nuts and bolts of a great game except the connectivity (the lobbies work great for me thoug).  It really is incredibly fun, and that's saying something because most multiplayer games don't really get good until they've gone through a number of post-release balance iterations.

I think an expansion would be the ideal fix for the bad press, as it would generate buzz and give SD a second go at all the ratings websites without having to beg or plead with them to re-review the game.  That being said, please don't give up on this game's development.  However, I really enjoy Stardock games and if it's the right decision for you to make as a company, then so be it.

Good luck with elemental btw., I'm really hoping it'll give you guys a big enough cash infusion to do things how you want to do them.