If there is one thing game developers hate about game releases, that is when the release dates are broken by game stores. In this case, it is GameStop who broke the release date of Stardock’s latest strategy game, Demigod and started selling copies of the game days before the scheduled release (which was set for today).

It is indeed true that many people wanted to purchase the game and GameStop got an advantage over the competitors by releasing the game early, but the result is that Demigod is now up on torrent sites, hurting the sales more than it would’ve happened if the title was officially released. And neither Stardock, nor Gas Powered Games don’t like that too much.

Writing for the Impulse website, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell says: “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.”

And, even though he admits that this will maximize piracy on the title, the situation will let them see the actual effects of piracy: “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.” An interesting approach to the situation.