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It is exactly like Demigod.

"If this game is even a fraction as fun as DotA, and has a native Linux client, it's a must buy from me."

You should also check out demigod if you have a more modern system.

http://www.demigodthegame.com/

Demigod is inspired by DoTA

I may sound like a troll with this post, and my apologies for it. But I've lost all respect for Cliff B., ever since he used the lame-o "piracy" excuse for not porting - PORTING, mind you, not "developing from scratch" - Gears of War 2 to PC. It's a cop-out, and to me it shows a lack of understanding of the issue and ways around it.

After all, Stardock doesn't have any problems developing for PC; they don't DRM their titles beyond what's being implemented with the new GOO platform; and despite the rocky launch of Demigod mired by users connecting with warezed copies, they seem to have made it a fairly successful title.

Play it online using GameRanger and it's nearly flawless. From the Demigod Downloads page:

If you are having issues playing Demigod online, try downloading GameRanger. GameRanger is a free download that lets you play games and demos online with friends and opponents worldwide.

...the horribly broken multiplayer in Demigod is an example of exactly why many people choose to pirate games rather than pay upwards of $90 (in Australia, equivalent in your local currency) for broken software.

Stardock recommended GameRanger precisely because of the major multiplayer problems with Demigod's built-in matchmaking. The game's multiplayer itself played just fine through GameRanger. It's safe to say there would have been a lot more refund requests otherwise, and it took some of the heat off Stardock while they tried to address the problems.

They even added a download button for GameRanger on their Demigod page right next to the Impulse one.

And the creators themselves said that they made a mistake making the game update automatically.
quote from http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467

But had we looked at what other publishers have said, we would have known that itâ(TM)s not unusual for there to be hundreds of thousands of warez copies in use. And if we had, we could have simply had the retail version not have any HTTP calls in it and instead just had an update button on the main menu to check for updates and voila, problem solved.

And yes, I agree with you about using the servers. And usually the creators make so that only legal copies can access the servers to play or update. Then the pirates either use their own servers or only play the single player mode (if the game has one). Just look at Valve games and non-Steam servers. If you have a pirated copy of some Valve game, you have to use non-steam servers and get your updates from somewhere else. No load on official game and update servers.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347467

Well, what a dramatic week it's been. The teams at Stardock and GPG have been burning the midnight oil this week.

As those of you who have the game can already see, the server issues are gone. We've recreated a duplicate of the server infrastructure we had but dedicated to users who have the most recent version of the game and a valid CD key (serial #).

Based on the logs, we are seeing lots of games being played on-line now. Yay. Average game has approximately 4.7 humans in it which is a good sign.

Some clarifications

I've seen a lot of news articles this week and a lot of confusion about what occurred this week. The issue isn't terribly complicated.

Ars Technica had a good article that describes what happened. But still, a lot of people seem to think warez users are able to play multiplayer games. No, they can't. Even the retail box has a serial # in it that users have to use and be validated to play online. What brought down servers was a lot more benign than that. It was the HTTPS requests to inform users if there was a new version along with checking the community features for info (friends lists, chat channels, etc.) and things like that. Things like that are pretty piddly. It's only when you get a ton of users doing that at the same time that it becomes a problem as we saw.

But here's the thing: While piracy is annoying, you can't blame piracy for this problem. Let's face it, there's plenty of data out there about how many pirated games are being played. We should have looked at that. We assumed since Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations, both of which sold extremely well and got great reviews, that the # of pirated copies of Demigod in use would probably be in the same ballpark, maybe twice as much. But had we looked at what other publishers have said, we would have known that it's not unusual for there to be hundreds of thousands of warez copies in use. And if we had, we could have simply had the retail version not have any HTTP calls in it and instead just had an update button on the main menu to check for updates and voila, problem solved.

The second misconception is the argument that because Demigod's retail version is heavily pirated that it costs massive sales. But that, again, puts the blame on the wrong parties. If you want to talk about the horrible multiplayer experience on launch day, well, that's our fault because of what I said above. If you want to say that the horrible day 1 multiplayer experience resulted in negative game reviews which will seriously damage the game's sales then I say again, that's our fault too because of what I said above OR we could have just sent out the review copies on release day (Tuesday) and reviewers wouldn't have had it until Thursday by which point the problem had largely been resolved and the review scores would have been fine. But in either case, it's still our fault.

So now what?

Now that the servers are working fine we're moving away from the "#$R@#@# Demigod sux!" posts and into the regular new game release issues.

So what issues are we seeing and working on? Here are a few at the top of our lists:

1. Players getting disconnected during games. Demigod's lag tolerance is fairly low resulting in disconnects if a player lags out a bit. This is fairly easy to fix. You get a player in Australia playing a user in Europe and there will be times when there's a hicup in their connection and POW, disconnect and it's extremely frustrating. I played all day today and it happened to me. This is a very high priority.

2. NAT negotiation. For users outside the United States in particular using DSL, this is a problem. This is a case where player A can't see player B and thus they can't play together. This is something we will be aggressively looking at next week. If we hadn't had the server overload, we likely would have this addressed already.

3. Panthe

I read this from a developer's perspective and I see something different than most of you: Piracy helped them!

(I can hear the collective 'What!?', so you can save those replies.)

They were only prepared for dismal sales. They said the server initially ran 'less well' with 10s of thousands of people online at once. They sold 18,000 copies. All of those people will want to be online at once at the start, so they weren't even really prepared for the real sales they got.

Then they got 5x that amount because of the piracy. This let them see exactly where the system needed to be improved to handle the load.

They managed this improvement -in a single day-.

In my world, anything that can help me make that kind of improvement is a massive help.

And lastly, I'm a -very- avid gamer and I had never heard of this game. Now it's on Slashdot's front page. You cannot -buy- that kind of advertising.

Last note: Anyone that publishes an online game without a serial code is a fscking moron. Most crackers will not write a keygen for an online game specifically because it costs the developers money when they do so. They only write keygens for offline games.

And 1 more: Note that there are only 6,000 players on the rankings for the tournament. http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/rankings/tournament/8/page/182 Are we really supposed to believe that only 6% of the people playing an online strategy game are interested in its first tournament? Or maybe that 100,000 was pulled out of their ass.

Err, easy to measure by whom, exactly? Certainly not us, the audience of these proclamations. Why, by the same token, my toilet-bowl-based Cold Fusion reactor produces easy to measure 2MW of electricity ... except it seems to stop working as soon as someone else than me or my employee researchers get into close proximity ... but because it is easy to measure you will just have trust me on that one!

It's funny how when Google says they have a few million Gwhatever users, we don't get a bunch of posts in here saying they're making the numbers up.

You're trying to tell me that the CEO of Stardock is making up the number of connections to Stardock's servers, which is easy for them to measure.

Sorry, but I'm going to need more then "he said it, it must be wrong!" to buy that. He's the only one in this conversation with the actual data to count.

Or perhaps they fucked up something and are now covering their butts by pointing fingers at their business partners and "pirates". There are other motivations possible here other then the one you are asked to sheepishly believe, you know...

They did, and he outlined all that quite nicely in his journal entries on the subject.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346815

What they did wrong is put a version check in on game startup. So all those pirate copies were hitting the servers. They're pretty open that they screwed that up. But it also wouldn't have been a real problem without the pirate traffic being five times more then the legitimate traffic.

The stupidity of this statement can only be demonstrated by a demand for you to disclose your "numbers" showing that my "numbers" of UFO spaceships infecting my dog's anus are wrong ... oh wait, that's right, you cannot ...

I also don't really care about spaceships in your dogs anus. If you're going to say that someone elses numbers are wrong when they're the only ones in a position to have the actual numbers, you need to back that up.

Or at least, in an intelligent discussion you would. Here on the Internet it's a lot of "well piracy is okay because I'm a cheapskate, so I'm sure the person who knows the real count is lying!"

The patches took a few months, it's not like they patched SecuROM out on the day of release. I would hope most publishers would be happy with that, though given it's relative rarity, I guess not.

And their next RTS, Demigod, will be published by Stardock, released via Impulse and have no DRM to speak of.