Free Tribes 1 and 2 Downloads, DVD Forthcoming

PoopShipDestroyer writes "In celebration for their upcoming game, Tribes: Vengence, Vivendi Universal Games is distributing the videogames Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 for free via FilePlanet.com on May 4th, and also on a special-edition DVD-ROM bundled with the newsstand edition of the June issue of Computer Gaming World magazine. The price is certainly right."

Comments

Why FilePlanet?

[Anti-Anti-Slash Blac]

Why did they have to use a crappy POS like FilePlanet to distribute this? Sure it's free, you only have to pay FilePlanet $ for a fast connection and fast access to the files. Otherwise your stuck at something like 32kps transfer speed and waiting in line for 2-hours for the download to start.

Patiently waiting for mirrors to show ups.......

Re:Why FilePlanet?

[gl4ss]

* Eh? While I agree FilePlanet is a crappy distribution method, it isn't slow.

You might have to wait in line for a while (personally, I've never had to wait more than 30 minutes even for super popular items) but I consistantly get 200-300 kBps when downloading.*

I think you should count that waiting in, and 200-300kbyte/s can be slow if there's places where you would get it 2mbyte/s..

the most annoying thing about fileplanets system is that it seems that the waiting is just artificial(as in, they would have the space on the servers), engineered you to just fess up and pay for the faster download. also they seem to negotiate exclusive/first distribution deals for some files, just to make it so that they are the ONLY place where you can get the file(at least for a short while). if they really are so out of bandwith for gods sake, but some torrents up!

It's enough for me to just wait that it's on somewhere else, if they're in the business of providing downloads and don't want to do it then fuck them, they obviously don't want me to look at their ads or use their system then.

fileplanet is slow in terms of 'when the file would be on your hd'.

Re:Why FilePlanet?

[realdpk]

I'm with you. I was tired of searching around for files, with every site sending me through a dozen hoops. Fileplanet offered a low price ($7 or something per month) for full access to all of their files.

On the technical side, the site works fine in Mozilla (except their search pages, they are a little funky. They work, just ugly.). They have some sort of IE ActiveX download control but I've never used it. Their cookies last a decent amount of time, so I only ever have to re-log in every month or so, and I just let Mozilla do that for me. I'm basically 3 or 4 clicks away from any file they host.

People also ask me to grab files for them off of fileplanet, but I don't mind. It's usually at network parties where we'd all benefit anyways.

Ultimately, I believe that paying for what I use is not a bad thing. Paying to have great access to what I use is even better. I've never had a slow download from Fileplanet for my subscription. I get the patches faster, and I get back to playing the game faster.

Re:Free not Free Enough

[Z0mb1eman]

A valid point, except most games have a fair bit of licensed code that wasn't developed in-house; it's impossible for a company to just decide to release the source to everything. And what's the alternative - spending tons of man-hours on stripping all the licensed code from an old game, just to release it for free? Doesn't make much sense either way.

Re:Free not Free Enough

[eht]

He wants his freedom at the expense of other peoples freedom.

Others are "free" to choose how they want to distribute thier property, but that isn't good enough for him, he wants it to be free on his and only his terms.

Serial?

[pilot1]

What about the serial number required for online play?
Will it be provided with the magazine/download?