As some of you who might have wandered into GameStop stores this weekend have discovered, the game retailer went ahead and broke started selling copies of Demigod a few days before its planned release tomorrow. That allowed lots of folks to get the long awaited strategy game from Gas Powered Games and Stardock a few days earlier than planned.

Over at the Impulse web site, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell comments on the GameStop issue and he's clearly not happy. He states, " . . . many of us had just finished a good solid 8 weeks of massive crunch and were looking forward to the weekend to recover. Instead, we found ourselves back at work having to turn on and configure the multiplayer matchmaking servers." Because of the early release from Gamestop, Wardell also says, " . . . piracy on this title will, in theory, be maximized." He adds, however, that this situation will actually be a way to see the effects of piracy, saying, "Since we know Demigod is an outstanding game with a wide appeal with equal retail and digital distribution to other titles that came out this year with similar demographics we can see how well it sells compared to them."

Because of Gamestop's actions (which have yet to be shown as either intentional or unintentional) Stardock has allowed all digitally distributed copies of the game to go live today. The other retail copies of the game will still go on sale beginning tomorrow at all the other retail outlets.