Those that have followed the development of Demigod or of previous Stardock titles may find this as no surprise: Stardock allows the legal piracy of Demigod.

A poorly advertised feature, though I don't know why. The magnitude of the hype you could generate is immense! Imagine telling the writhing masses that you only need one Demigod license for everyone on a LAN to play. They will be queueing up to buy copies! Or more realistically, one dude (or dudette for those that don't recognise the unisex connotation of 'dude') will buy a copy and that person's friends will just mooch off them every LAN. But we all knew that was going to happen anyway. In fact, without this liberating clause in Demigod's user manual I reckon it was more likely that everyone at said hypothetical LAN would simply play a warez copy and no-one would own a legal one.

Of course there's no such thing as legal piracy since software piracy is defined as the breaching of the clauses governing copying and distribution in End User License Agreements. But I got you reading didn't I?

Frogboy mentioned the ability to run a LAN off a single license in one of his daily updates during Demigod's multiplayer teething problems. By 'teething' I mean huge and debilitating, of course. This was on 29 April, 3 weeks after the official launch of Demigod, and in the same post where Frogboy/Draginol/Brad "declared victory in spite of (t3h) Piracy" as misreported by our more illustrious newsmongers.

I think there are many lessons to be learned from Demigod.  For example, if I had to do it over again, I would be inclined to require a valid user account to play LAN even if it only has to be validated one time. That way, we could also make it a lot easier for a legal user to have a LAN party with a single license. Anyone who has played Demigod on Game Ranger probably knows what and why I'm bringing that up.

As you can see, it's barely a mention. It also doesn't really seem as if anyone else has run with the news. In fact, people on the forum also seemed to gloss over the tidbit of information and asked for "spawned" versions of the game a-la WarCraft 2, Diablo and StarCraft that allows somone to play multiplayer over LAN with someone that owns a legal copy of the game.

Eventually Zubaz, a Stardock employee, clarifies.

The manual (page 15): also states:

LAN Games
Players can also play on their local area network (LAN). Demigod has no restriction on licensed copies on the LAN so go ahead and have fun!

If you'd like to take a look at the manual for yourself then Zubaz (the legend that he is) has yet again provided the relevant info: http://www.stardock.com/demigodmanual.pdf.

I read those two sentences a hundred times each and I still couldn't figure out what exactly was meant by them. My first reaction is, "Well I certainly hope Demigod doesn't have a limit on licensed copies on a LAN. How much would it suck if only 10 (or even 50) players on a LAN were allowed to run the game?"

Considering the context of the conversation Zubaz quoted said text in, it couldn't mean anything other than, "You may share your licensed copy amongst as many PCs on a LAN as you'd like." The paragraph is unclear, as well as suspiciously missing from the international retail manual.

In an earlier post on the forums Zubaz is clearer about the LAN licensing terms and mentions the following provisos as well.

No. Your one license will handle all the players.  Make sure they uninstall after the [LAN] party.

...

Please note that we do track activations and at some point if you share it with many people it will prompt you to contact Stardock support.

We want people to share.  We want people to buy.  We do not want to get in the way.  We do not want to be abused.

Unfortunately Stardock doesn't make it particularly easy to make use of this feature. From my experimentation and reading through various threads on the Stardock forum it seems the only truly feasible way to install the game on different machines is using ImpulseAnywhere. This involves downloading a full build of the game at around 2.8GB. And you'll have to do that everytime you install a new patch in-between LANs. That's probably why Demigod's fantastic LAN licensing terms aren't advertised far and wide.

There are many that argue that piracy helps provide exposure for games (a similar argument is made for music as well) and that the PC gaming scene would see even less action than it does now if it weren't for the illegal copying and distribution of games. Here, finally, is a company that recognises that.

Rather than criminalising their customers they listen to them. They enable them (that would be you and I, the common game consumer) to enjoy their game license with their friends over LAN, and thus let their existing customer/fanbase and the game itself do marketing for them.

Now if only they had made it easier to do.