Poor Demigod had a rocky launch. Mainly because there were too many people trying to play the game. And why were there too many people? Because there were five pirates for every paying customer.
In a post on the game's forums, Stardock's Brad Wardell has revealed that the game's servers have been flooded with users trying to play the game. More users than they would have anticipated going by sales, as Wardell says internal data shows that while the game has been purchased by 18,000 people, there have been around 120,000 people trying to play the game over the past week.
So, yes, mostly pirated copies. Come on PC gamers. You wonder why companies decide to saddle you with crap like SecuROM, regardless of how ineffective and unpopular it is? It's because of statistics like that.
Update: We contacted Stardock reps to clarify the "legitimate" versus "warez" figures posted by CEO Brad Wardell on the game's official forums, who told Kotaku that concurrent connections from Demigod players do not necessarily equate to sales. According to a statement, the "18,000 figure is the [number] of concurrent users at the peak – not sales."
"[Demigod's] infrastructure was designed to handle up to 50,000 of these connections," said Wardell. "But on day 0, there were around 140,000 concurrent users of which 18,000 are validated. Pirated users can't get updates or play multiplayer but they still touch the servers."
That crush of users, most of them not-legitimate (read: pirated) copies led to what Wardell called a "terrible experience."
Stardock and Demigod developer Gas Powered Games then "[scrapped] together a doppelganger of the infrastructure dedicated to Demigod's multiplayer network needs" and issued an update to legit players, essentially keeping the pirates from crashing the multiplayer party.
Demigod: Day 1 Status Report [Demigod]