Following the game's release on Monday Tuesday, about 120,000 people attempted to play Gas Powered Games' PC title, Demigod, online. However, only 15% of those connections were genuine purchasers, while the remaining 85%, totaling in at about 102,000 players, are playing via pirated software, according to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. Although pirates aren't actually able to partake in the multiplayer portion of the game, the opening version of Demigod pinged a server for updates upon booting - meaning that every player with an established Internet connection hit the server.
Wardell went on to say that Stardock has spent a lot of time trying to sift out the warez users from the legitimate ones, but that it would require a lot of surgery to actually "break them". He feels, though, that it is a lose-lose situation because it's not like there will be an accompanying "ha ha pirate" message to those being cut off from the game - thus resulting in people simply labeling the game buggy.
Being that the company is heavily opposed to invasive DRM, as with other Stardock releases, Demigod shipped without any on-disc copy protection.