While most of us were off stuffing our faces with chocolate eggs and persevering against the evil that is the Easter Bunny, the support team for the recently released Demigod was hard at work no thanks to a certain retail giant.
For whatever reason, GameStop released the game last week even though it wasn't supposed to be sold until today. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal, or anything too out of the ordinary, as street dates are broken quite frequently.
But it's the fact that Demigod is being heavily pushed as a digital download that's got people speculating that GameStop purposely botched the launch date in defiance of Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse. Either way, the slip-up forced the game's support team to configure the multiplayer servers for the unexpected amount of early players over the weekend, right after "a good solid eight weeks of massive crunch."
I don't think I need to remind you all about the state of overtime in this industry. Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has commented on the situation, saying that it's "maximized" piracy for Demigod (the game is free of copy protection), and is in discussion with GameStop to figure out how this could have happened.
[Via Gamasutra]
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Contest:
8:30 PM on 04.14.2009
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Punishing customers who actually bought the game is hardly good corporate policy. It's not their fault GameStop fucked up.
Was this at every retail location? Because I don't believe that every single GameStop sold the game almost a week early. Breaking a street date is usually a very isolated happenstance. For an entire chain to break it at the same time, it would have had to come from corporate.
Another good question: Could you buy a copy of Demigod for the whole week, or did GS take it off the shelves?
It's not that simple. Gamestop is THE retailer in the US, and cutting them out of the loop cuts a HUGE amount of people out of the loop. Digital distribution doesn't have nearly the amount of market penetration needed to effectively replace a retail channel, and Gamestop is it in the US.
Further, shutting down the servers on a heavily multiplayer-focused title is suicide. It'd be SECONDS before the forums and blogs would be yelling OMFG SHITSUX DEMIGOD SERVERS FUKKIN BROKEN DONT BUY PIRATE INSTEAD STARDOCK.
And considering the main focus point of the game is multiplayer, piracy is kind of a moot point. You almost want to promote piracy for a game like this when there is no demo, that way people have a chance to play before they pay.
Punishing customers who actually bought the game is hardly good corporate policy. It's not their fault GameStop fucked up.
Was this at every retail location? Because I don't believe that every single GameStop sold the game almost a week early. Breaking a street date is usually a very isolated happenstance. For an entire chain to break it at the same time, it would have had to come from corporate.
Another good question: Could you buy a copy of Demigod for the whole week, or did GS take it off the shelves?
Sucks for Stardock. But I don't get it. How does Gamestop force Stardock to do that? It's not like Gamestop owns Stardock.
Demigod is available as both a digital download and a retail box. Gamestop sold the retail boxes a week before the street date, forcing Stardock to set the multiplayer servers up early to avoid pissing off customers. Is that simple enough for you to understand?
Personally, I'd like more clarification. Did this happen at a large amount of Gamestops? If it wasn't an isolated incident, then I'm inclined to believe that it was done on purpose. There are previous incidents of Gamestop throwing a hissy fit over digital distribution, which will hopefully kill their business. They stopped taking Dawn of War II pre-orders (until the internet pitched a fit) because of the way it is tied into Steam. They wanted royalties on the digital download versions of the Penny Arcade game in exchange for selling it at retail. And Empire: Total War is mysteriously difficult to find at Gamestops...
Thanks for making the decision that much easier for me, retards.
I gladly spend my money elsewhere.
It's pretty clear Gamestop had a motive here. I believe it was to strike back at them for lowering the cost of the digital version.
That was just complete negligence on GameStop's part. Any dumbass at the store could have looked at the game's website which had a COUNTDOWN TIMER for the release scheduled 1pm EST today.
It's pretty clear Gamestop had a motive here. I believe it was to strike back at them for lowering the cost of the digital version.
They sold it a weekend end early and it wasn't an isolated thing, all gamestops were selling it. I'm sure it was a mistake and if you guys were interested in this game you wouldn't be upset, you'd be happy to get the game early.
(I also saw in the store that they were selling Starwars Empire at War, original not expansion, for 60$. Target has the game with the expansion for 20$. >.> yaaaaa)
However, as ZeeJay stated, the game wasn't street dated in the system. How are the stores supposed to know that the game is street dated if the company isn't told?
If Stardock really wanted their "Easter break", then they should've shipped the game with little "Do Not Sell Until" stickers that almost EVERY SINGLE street dated game GameStop receives has on them.
I've seen this same story on all three of the gaming blogs I frequent despite the fact that, on every single article, there are GameStop employees saying that the problem was not on the company's end. It's getting annoying seeing the same story on every site with the same misinformation.
This is the same thing that happened with several other titles. Gamestop seems to have a crap policy when it comes to breaking streetdates. It happened with Spore as well over in Australia. Some shop in the middle of nowhere sold a copy "accidentally", they sent the receipt to the main office and for some reason all Gamestops were allowed to sell it from that point on without ramifications.
I can imagine that Gamestop applies the same strategy internationally. It plays hell on the developers but hey at least they get extra revenue right?
A large problem is simply the size of gamestop. They get several titles early on in their inventory because of their size. As it happens it always seems to be these titles that are sold too early.
This was most definitely a miscommunication on a very high level that trickled down and not an individual store's fault.
And you can't expect every single gamestop employee to frequent videogame sites of every new game coming out. there's just too much.
Hopefully things get settled with the least acid spitting, but there will still be some.