Last night we got the update out.  The change log can be found on Impulse (right click and view the change log).  Lots of improvements.

We ultimately marked it as a beta because we ran out of time and couldn't integrate the updated connection code which meant that the existing connection DLL had to be included which has a launch bug that causes an occasional crash when combined with this new build.

Anywyay, we had been hoping to surprise people by having the update include the Proxy server update.  But it too wasn't quite ready. We had pushed until Friday to try to surprise everyone but we didn't want to go a second weekend without showing some substantial improvements for those people who have been having difficiulties.

We're going to have an update probably on Monday to move the beta from release. 

The problem with betas, as some of you no doubt have noticed, is that you split the multiplayer community and that can make the skirmish and pantheon games a lot less fun because you end up with a lot fewer 3 on 3 human games.  So we have to do these sparingly.

Now, that said, I want to address a nmber of points in one place that keep coming up online:

Comment 1: "Stardock is overstating Demigod difficulties, to get coverage, the game works fine for me"

First, yes, while the game works fine for most people. There are a significant number of people who are having problems connecting through the built in multiplayer match making.  While I may seem to focus a lot on those issues, in the long run, this is a game that will live and die on its ability to sustain a MP community and it is important that people know that we are taking their issues seriously.

Comment 2: "The multiplayer match making is totally buggy, how could they release it like this???"

So at the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the people who are having trouble getting into games with the built in match making.  I share your frustration.  But Stardock was in no rush to release Demigod.  Demigod was done as far as we were concerned. 

Now, as the publisher, it's our responsibility to make sure problems in anything we release are addressed. But we haven't been fixing "bugs".  We have been getting a crash course in P2P scaleability (or lack there of). 

Should Demigod have had a big huge open MP beta? Yea, in hindsight, yes. If we had a time machine, we would do that.  But we've released games that have MP before (Sins of a Solar Empire, The Political Machine, The Corporate Machine, and OS/2 games before that). The difference here is the difference between MP-centric and a game that's mostly played SP that has MP.

And how does that difference translate? Well, in Sins, you might (and Sins players can attest to this) a game that tops out with 200 people playing online at once versus a game that has 1000 people in games online and another 8000 people who are online in the process of looking for games.  And as many people have said, it works decently overall.

There are programs like Game Ranger that largely take care of the match making for people who want to use that while we migrate towards a system where we host the games for players but it's not something that's easily done overnight. 

PC game expectations have come a long way over the past several years. Leaders in our industry like Blizzard have raised the bar with things like Battle.net and our friends at Relic have created RelicOnline which works very well. And of course there is GameSpy Arcade which has evolved over a period of years.

We appreciate the patience of those who are having difficulties. I can assure you that Gas Powered Games and Stardock are working inhuman hours to solve their problems as quickly as possible (70 to 90 hours last week for instance per person involved).  But these hours aren't about "finishing" a game. The game shipped finished. It's the scale of things that we were (clearly) unprepared for. We can't change the past, we can only take things from where they are now.

A lot of progress has been made internally. In less than 2 weeks, we've taken a game that is a peer-to-peer game and developed an infrastructure from scratch to make it so that the publisher's servers will be handling potentially 100% of the network traffic for all games played throughout the world.  This was not contemplated prior to release but we are commited to making sure that MP is bullet proof even if it takes longer than we all wish.

We're working on it even now.