Game Server Licencing?

I was just reading about the release of Demigod, from Stardock. Stardock has found a rare warm spot in my cold, cynical heart with their stance towards copy-protection: they don't use it.

Update: Since I initially posted this, they have moved up the game charts. They are showing good sales despite all the piracy.

Their last game, Sins of a Solar Empire, did quite well without copy protection, and it was hoped that this release would work out the same. I liked the game a lot - it isn't just some second-rate game desperate for an audience. It was good.

Well, not quite. It turns out, when the game starts up, it makes a request from Stardock's game servers. Or something like that. In any event, even people who copied the game without buying it were connecting to the multiplayer game servers. So, even legit customers were having a poor experience.

Some of the numbers that came out of this are interesting, too. There were about 120,000 connections, but only 18,000 of those were paid for. A lot of people are pointing to this as a failure, but I look at it as rather successful. That's 120K people who want to play the game. If they can't monetize that audience, then part of the failure is theirs.

Given the requirements of game servers these days, I certainly understand the desire of game developers to find ways to recoup the costs. How about selling licenses to those game servers? Heck, let me allow pirated copies to connect, and I'll pay more for the privilege. Stardock could be the official, sanctioned site, offering a higher quality experience. I'll help convert some of those freeloaders into actual income off of whatever crap I can scam from a local colo.

Maybe I'm just another spoiled internet brat, wanting more now that I've been given whatever it was I was whining about before. I do think game makers are missing the point when they take on the whole D&D GM-ish role. Running a game server is similar to running a role-playing game.

There's a lot of people who like to be GMs, and a lot of people who would prefer to play with those GMs. Game servers scratch the same itch, and there's money on the table for whoever satisfies it. People want to play, they want to play the way they want to play, and no single source can satisfy all the variations.

C'mon. I've always wanted to run my own WoW server. How hard could it be? ;)