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P2P Solutions To Legal Game-Related Downloads?
[TASF]Overkill writes "As 'P2P' slowly becomes a synonym for 'illegal', the perfectly legitimate and still very useful capabilities of P2P emerge. Modifications, demos, trailers, and other game-related files are typically downloaded by a lot of users all at once, something that kills the client-server setup of most websites. Game Philez is using Gnutella, ED2k, and G2, to help users avoid the long lines at other download sites, and helping to ensure that P2P stays useful, even for the DMCA-fearing citizen." With legal game-related BitTorrent solutions like FileRush and GameTab also out there, is P2P a viable alternative to the subscription download services?
It seems that the current thinking from the IDSA and other software publishers, developers and associations is 'If it can be used illegally, it's illegal, and will only be used by pirates'. BitTorrent and the like are being picked up independants, and are being used for some demos (ToEE over KaZaA, for example), but until the mainstream developers start to use it, it will always be 'fringe'. GameSpy and FileShack will still get their exclusives and that will keep P2P marginalized.
Massive games like EQ, UO, etc; stuff that gets patched a lot would benefit greatly by making use of an integrated bit torrent client. Consider that the EQ patch server was a single perma seed. Players with enough bandwidth would have the internal bit torrent client running in the background while playing and auto serve the patch to other people. People without enough bandwidth could simply disable the sharing feature or a system that detected bottlenecks could shut it off automatically.
As a result, the company would save vast amounts of money in bandwidth and could possibly lower the monthly fee as a result. P2P != illegal.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
BitTorrent is the best business argument for not banning the concept of P2P outright; it's a far better distribution model than having your customers visit FilePlanet and sit in line to grab a patch or demo for your program. I very much think that BitTorrent-style distribution is on its way towards broad acceptance, provided that authentication of the file contents and (in the event of commercial content) of the user's payment for use the file is easy and ensured... and FurtherNet is a good demonstration that both should be possible.
Sure, the article is game-related, but BT has become popular for distributing Linux ISOs.
And even though people talk about how independent musicians sharing their music over p2p is just a front for everyone swapping crappy metallica songs, I was able to find several copies of God Ate My Homework's songs on Kazaa. And thats legal usage too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
In part it seems like all the anti p2p attitude has pushed some schools to traffic shape the HELL out of every port greater than 1024.
I know that at one school I formerly attended they even traffic shape AIM file transfers because "they make it too easy to send copyrighted files".
This is done for the most part to make life easier on the school's sysadmins and legal department because rather than dealing with the problem of their users rights being trampled, they just make the problem go away.
And I feel very strongly that users rights are being trampled when their internet connection is being traffic shaped with preference to specific ports, rather than per user instantaneous bandwidth allocations (as may be required to fairly distribute total bandwidth). It should be the user's responsibility to determine whether or not his or her actions are legal, because in the end the end user bears the consequences.
The Ro Factor - Jeep/Linux Weblog
Yeah? Well you'd be wrong.
USENET has been around for decades; and very definitely is peer-peer. In fact the internet itself is peer-peer. How do you think IP routing works?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I run GamePhilez, and I'm on the Shareaza alpha team (And BitTorrent now works REALLY well for me in Shareaza) and I'm not a big fan of "ripping down teh 1ndu5try!" However, due to The ESA's (www.theesa.com) automated search bot, I've been flagged twice as sharing illegal content. The Enemy Territory client, E3 footage, the Half-Life patch... It seems the words "Wolfenstein", "Doom", and "Half-Life" generated those cease and decist letters we all know so well. That's not very nice of them... Most ISPs, upon receiving such a notice, immediately shut down the "offender's" Internet and remove their account, no questions asked. Well, when my school notified me (Two seperate occasions), a representative at Valve told me that no, these files were obviously meant for distribution, and they had no idea why the ESA would send out a notice for these things. If my Internet HAD been shut down, you can rest assured that I would have taken them to court.
is there some sort of bittorrent server that seeds files on request.
because it's a pain to have a bittorrent client running for each download even if nobody is downloading it.
Let's name some older technologies and their original uses.
Photography: Pornography
Telephone: Illicit listening to live concerts
Records: Illicit recording of live concerts
VCR: Pornography
Cinema: Pornography
Cassette Tapes: Illicit recording of copyrighted audio
World Wide Web: Pornography and Illicit playback of copyrighted audio
Broadband: see above
And now Peer-to-Peer distribution systems have evolved as a technology into something mature and usable. It only makes sense that the technology can and will be harnessed for legal ends, rather than the very human desires that drive most new technological adaptations. It's only a matter of time before the copy of Kill Bill volume 1 and 2 that you rent from Blockbuster.com and download to Media Player will be downloaded from other Media Player users who already have the movie.
Gaming companies generally are the first adapters because they live and die on both emerging technologies and risk. When Apple realizes that they could add 5c to their 7c per song profit on songs sold through ITunes, they will certainly enable a controlled form of P2P sharing. When CinemaNow realizes the same thing, they too will jump at the chance to add profit where there once was a major fixed cost.
Just as VCRs started as an uncontrollable piracy distribution medium, so too will P2P evolve into a powerful cash-earning medium for the content companies. It's not a matter of if, but when.
And it seems that now is the time.
The ______ Agenda
Not to be self serving here at all, seriously. I work for a company (happypuppy.com), whose business model is the same as the subscription services (we were subscription also, until a week or two ago). The software we use for download acceleration, was developed and licensed from Onion Networks (who've been mentioned on ./ before). One of the differences with our technology (FileSwarmer as we call it) is that we have multiple servers, East and West, populated with the game demos already. This coutners some of the issues I've personally noted with torrents. We can guarnatee that there will be locations for people to get the file from, and don't solely rely on the P2P functionality (which greatly increases the reliability and speed of the whole process). I think that sites like Gametab are great, I think that using P2P technologies for facilitating, and bypassing the subscription models, will help to continue the growth of the VG industry.
I haven't seen anyone mention costs here yet. I am on a 15 GB transfer limit here, and while I realize that many other people have "unlimited" transfer capabilites (as to total down and uploaded) if enough people were to switch to bittorrent style transfers, how long would it take before these "unlimited" system became very limited? Some of the cable providers are aqlready experimenting with capping off their "excessive bandwidth" users...... there are costs associated with this beyond what Fileplanet and their ilk pay. If we could devise a system that had a sedrver in each ISP, so that way traffic stayed local within the network, then we definitely would have something useful.
they're the leading online gaming presence (in the non MMORPG category), and routinely have massive downloadable content / updates. (going from an original HL to one of the current mods requires a 300+ MB update).
the recent steam downloading debacle is a perfect example of why this should be done. Valve releases a small steam client and expects people to download the content they need. Each download is in the range of the hundreds of megabytes. So what happens? Steam servers get hammered by the 100,000 fans downloading it all, and it takes people several days to actually get any content. Then enough people complain that the small client isn't working properly (by not getting new content), so Valve releases a steam+content file (350 MB or so) and expects people to wait in line to download it at a pay site (or find the obscure European site that actually has it available). (or in my case, actually install Bittorrent for to get the file).
So, why not have some sort of bittorrent client inside steam that monitors server performance and dynamically adjusts whether to download directly from the server or share it p2p.
Valve already encourages you to leave Steam running 24/7, so its almost natural to set it up to distribute patches this way with minimal cost to Valve. If everyone indeed leaves it on 24/7, I imagine everytime a major patch is released, Valve is going to get hammered... just seems logical that they distribute the patch to the big pipes, and from there have everyone p2p it.
(of course, this could similar to what they are doing, but one clearly can't tell that from the various in-steam monitors)
Not that I particularily like Steam from Valve Software yet, but it may be a decent beginning for something useful. :(
Anyway, when they rolled Steam out, their servers were immediately DOSed by CounterStrike players who were trying to upgrade. After having read the description on the Steam homepage I had assumed that Steam would be using a P2P scheme for content delivery. I geuss they didn't think of that.
In my opinion, their "content servers" should have provided an original copy and checksums, and the Steam client should have used the same mechanism it uses to find other players (essentially finds other Steam clients) to find Steam clients who have the required file already, and have not maxed out their outgoing bandwidth. The client should then add different sources until the download bandwidth maxes out or until there are no more sources. The original content servers should be the last resort to ensure minimal load.
Maybe Valve could look at eDonkey/eMule for an example implementation.
Just an instance where I believe P2P should have been used. (Hey, maybe if they are smart they will add this in a furure update...)
with a straight face that it isn't just pirates using it
Arrrrr..... matey! I'm sick people stereotyping us to common theives. Arrrrr!
Valve's Steam content delivery service is going to become a P2P application at some point in the near future. This has been a feature planned from the get-go, it just has yet to be implemented. Much maligned though Steam is, this will dramatically affect load times, content updates, bug fixes for the better.
Though this could not possibly be more off-topic, I'll bite. I have not bought one. But then again, I rarely have to buy anything involved with console gaming... Do I have one or not? That wasn't the question. And this post is really just a test to see how much time you spend following me around.
I know some games like Baseball Mogul BaseballMogul have put up their Demos on Kazaa a few years ago. Might be a good way for a small developer to gain some exposure ans save on bandwidth costs.
I've only used BitTorrent (BT) a few times, but as far as I can see problems occur when something is freshly released. For example, recently when Red Orchestra was mentioned on /. I thought i'd download it. Saw the BT link within the comments and tried to give it a go. Gave up after 30 minutes when I'd downloaded 10MB of 250 or whatever and uploaded 25MB. Got in a FilePlanet queue and had the whole thing in 60 minutes, including a 25 minute wait in the queue.
The problem, as far as I can tell, when something is "new" is that there are few seeds and everyone is starting up downloads.. so the seed is saturated serving the first chunk out to 100 leechers at 2KB/sec each, then once the leechers have the first chunk they're serving the first chunk to new leechers while they're all trying to get the next chunk. In theory performance would increase as leechers become seeders, but in practice most people are glad to have finally got the whole file and just close the window.
Anyway, that's how I see it. I've also had good downloads with BT where there was a number of seeders and relatively few leechers, but that's hardly different from downloading from a website that's not busy.
I saw this too, with the release of the Natural Selection mod. I'm not sure why, but the BitTorrent release suffered not-so-hot download speeds, and the Shareaza (g2) release which had more downloaders, was constantly applauded. We had 100 kB/s dedicated to our file releases back then, and that was apparently more than enough to keep everyone happy. I was very satisfied with the flash-release system of that file. Unfortunately, we no longer have any dedicated mirrors or users, a factor that as you've pointed out considerably hurts download speeds. Of the 500 times that file was downloaded in the first 30 minutes, the main server probably only sent out 40 or so fully copies of it. That's great turn-around to me, especially considering that just about everyone involved had some really nice download rates. One thing that needs to be stressed however, is that these P2P systems REALLY require that you properly configure your firewall. BT, ED2K, Morpheus, KaRaap, and Shareaza... They all work a LOT better if you route the appropriate ports. I wish I had a better way of telling gamers that before that started trying to download stuff, but I don't.