Atari, ToEE, And P2P Distribution For Games?

Txiasaeia writes "In a very strange turn of events, it seems as if Kazaa (and only the 'official' Kazaa, not any of its non-spyware derivatives) is offering a copy of Atari's new PC RPG, Temple of Elemental Evil for download. What makes this particular case unusual is the fact that, once you download the 6-hour time-limited 'demo', you can unlock the full game for $49.95. While Steam has been doing this with Counterstrike, Kazaa is footing the bill for the bandwidth for ToEE, which makes it one of the first times that a major game publishing house has embraced a P2P client as part of its official distribution network. Is this latest move by Atari an attempt to garner media attention (especially with the RIAA and Kazaa in the news), or are they seriously embracing P2P as a legitimate source for game distribution?"

Comments

Sweet!

[MImeKillEr]

It's based on TSR's old module by the same name.

Not a bad idea...

[bjb]

Frankly, this is good not only for P2P by showing a legitimate use, but also for the company distributing the software. First, the company can host it in one place and foots the bill for the bandwidth doing that. Next, someone downloads it to their machine. As long as the consumer keeps the download on their machine (which probably happens more than expected), future downloads can be made from that person's machine, using that person's bandwidth instead of the company's. Quite a good plan, actually. If anything, the company at least saves some percentage of download bandwidth, since at least a handful of them will not be on their bill.

If this proves successful, it will only help keep P2P around for a lot longer than the RIAA could hope.

Re:How is it locked?

[Jiles]

Apparently it also lacks some resources, such as movies and music and buying it gives you access to the rest of the resources.

Is it just me, or does it seem a bit odd that Atari are charging full price? Surely they'd be able to pass on the savings they're making on the packaging to us. (Good god, what an awful sentence). *shrugs* I guess at least you won't have to deal with the SecuRom problems that some folks have been having. More than likely Atari trying to shaft the consumer again, can anyone spell 'paper-fucking-CD-sleaves'?

Correction

[emj]

Steam is not a P2P application, it is a way for Valve to control which game you have installed and which games you are allowed to play on the internet with. When SteamBeta was released the first time (~ yr ago) it maxed out the 700Mbps it had allocated, and now when stable they maxed out yet again. Compare this to f.scarywaters.com statistics where the slashdot crowd alone managed to get it to 1.4Gbps (the double) in less than 3hrs... Now P2P certainly isn't the solution for commercial vendors, but for amatuers sure..

Re:The torrent

[torpor]

I admire bittorrent, but I have such a very difficult time ever *finding* anything on that network.

How do you handle this? Surely a 'google of torrent' application would be *The* next killer Internet thing?

Also - I'm a DSL user, can I become a bit-torrent node easily enough? I'll run whatever OS I need to be able to serve my own bittorrent stuff ... as an artist, nothing could be better or more worth the effort!

KaZaA is a P2P program...

[JonoPlop]

"KaZaA will foot the bill for bandwidth?" It's a peer-to-peer program; the users supply the files over their own bandwidth. KaZaA pays nothing.