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Ex-Blizzard Devs Sign With Namco, Blizzard Using BitTorrent

Posted by simoniker on from the blizzard-of-bits dept.

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting a press release revealing the ex-Diablo creators now at Flagship Studios have signed a publishing deal with Namco, in a move that "marks Namco's official entry into the PC games publishing business" - we've previously covered Flagship Studios' formation on Slashdot Games. Elsewhere, several readers point out Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, which has announced with regard to the upcoming WoW Beta test: "While we plan on having several ways available to distribute the files to everyone, our primary method will be through the Blizzard Downloader program, which uses BitTorrent technology." Update: 03/18 21:01 GMT by S : There's more discussion on Blizzard and other companies using BitTorrent in a recent mainpage post.

2 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Legit Bit (torrent) by Kethinov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I never got a chance to contribute in yesterday's (or was it the day before's?) article about bit torrent suddenly becoming sanctioned in games.

    But I predicted this would happen in the early days of Bit Torrent (god I wish I could find my +5 on the subject from last year or so.)

    Anyway, this saves companies TONS of bandwidth and if has already been proven with Linux distros. The Fedora torrent is massively successful.

    It may also urge crappy ISPs to up the amount of bandwidth they give to customers when they realize that high bandwidth != piracy always.

    --
    You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
    1. Re:Legit Bit (torrent) by macrom · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most cable providers do provide asynchronous access here in the US, with upload speeds being a small percentage of the upload bandwidth. I am using Comcast's service and I believe the download is 3Mbit and the upload is 384Kbit (maybe 512Kbit since they just upgraded the service in my area). I know that companies try to give you enough uplink speed to play games, etc. but still discourage users from running a small-time ISP-like service. In fact, some providers even block outbound HTTP, FTP, mail, etc. requests altogether.

      I am not sure about BitTorrent -- it may be too new to be noticed on the radar.