Bit Torrent is not acceptable!

[blobbo]

Come on.

You're a commercial developer, you're charging money for your product, you buy hosting for your massive amount of detailed textures. Making me use Bit Torrent to download your product is like saying:

"I spent thousands to create this content, but I'm not going to spend a dime to actually send it to you."

It's unprofessional, even if you seed it. Until BT is built into Safari, no no no! Bad developer! No cookie for you.

[Danlab]

? WTF ?

:sneaky:

[Duane]

Bittorent isn't bad if it's well seeded, but for regular downloads, without choice? :blink: That's just wonky! :wacko:

[ThemsAllTook]

Maybe if it's the only download option, but if it's in addition to an HTTP host, it could potentially provide a higher transfer rate.

[AnotherJake]

Maybe if it's the only download option, but if it's in addition to an HTTP host, it could potentially provide a higher transfer rate.
I totally agree. Sometimes bittorrent is the only way to go when an HTTP host is hopelessly bogged down, perhaps during initial release of a suddenly popular program. I do agree that it most definitely should not be the *only* download option for a commercial product though, but I actually like seeing BT as a secondary download option. I think it would be pretty lame of a developer not to provide HTTP as the primary download option of a commercial product (especially if we know they can afford it).

[Hog]

I hope you are not talking of WoW. otherwise you'd need to have your priorities (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11554) sorted out.

[Taxxodium]

Until BT is built into Safari, no no no! Bad developer! No cookie for you.

Yeah like that's ever gonna happen. Makes me think you're a bit shortsighted, aren't you.

BT is just a different method to download files. It's true it's mostly used for illegal purposes, but many professional companies offer demo's or even patches to apps available via BT.

So whether you like it or not, BT will not go away for some time.

[OneSadCookie]

Blobbo's original point is, if the developer is charging you for their product, they should not also charge you to download their product, and I kinda agree. Bandwidth isn't *that* expensive.

OTOH, for a demo, I can kinda accept it. It's something that's not directly earning them money, and it's a very expensive advertisement...

[blobbo]

Exactly, OSC. Charge for the product, don't make me seed your demo download. WTF?

If you force me to use BT only to download your demo, you can be assured that:

a) I'll not download unless I'm *really* wanting to try it.
b) I sure as hell won't seed unless you're paying me for my bandwidth or giving me money off your final product.

Hell, hide the bandwidth fees in the cost of the product. It's like when my school charged me $50 to attend my own graduation, after I paid $23,000/year for tuition. WTF?

[reubert]

Aside from all the negative implications to do with paying for extra bandwidth and such, there are a couple of other problems with BitTorrent:

- It's an unknown to at least some potential downloaders, who may not take the effort to find out what BT is about. Anyone who downloads your .torrent file has to then do a bunch of other things in order to get your software to work.
- It requires third party software which is used extensively in the piracy world and many people may not want it for risk of security /adware etc.
- Some organisations and ISPs will throttle or disallow all BT network traffic.

Sure, offer it as an option, I mean why not? But anyone who only allows BT is either only aiming at a very specific group of people, or is missing out on a (I would guess) fairly substantial number of downloads.

[Tools10]

Anyone checked out the Blizzard downloader lately?
If not bittorent it's using a very similar technology and is a stand alone application.

1:
Maybe if it's the only download option, but if it's in addition to an HTTP host, it could potentially provide a higher transfer rate.
2:
Isn't capitalism all about trying to save money as much as possible?

[AnotherJake]

2:
Isn't capitalism all about trying to save money as much as possible?

No, it's about trying to *earn* as much money as possible. If the numbers work out for a company that using BT-only earns more money in the end, then that's the way to go, period. What some of us are arguing is that they will wind up earning less money if all they do is offer BT as the sole download option. Not that we know that for a fact, but it seems a pretty simple concept when looking at it from the outside, considering *some* of us might actually refuse to even give a product so much as a chance if BT is the only option. Not only that, but some potential buyers might not even be computer savvy enough to know what it is or how to use it. http is built-into the browser so that plugs that potential loss. And as already mentioned, bandwidth is pretty cheap. As a general rule, you do not want to present potential buyers with any more hoops than is completely necessary for them to get to the purchase. The more they are inconvenienced, the less likely they are to ultimately buy the product. If they have to spend fifteen minutes reading what BT is and how to use it and install it, then you are creating another hoop. Any salesman will tell you that's a no-no. BUT... The amount of money saved by going BT-only vs. the amount money lost because of customers lost due to them not using BT for whatever reason is the magic question here. It makes most sense to offer http for users who prefer that, but also to offer BitTorrent for users who would like to use that instead (and potentially save the developer money at the same time).

[OneSadCookie]

Ultimately, it's their decision, and you have no right to get angry about it -- if you don't want to pay for the bandwidth to seed their demo, don't torrent it at all. If that ends up costing them customers, that's their problem.

[Tools10]

Just a question then?
Anyone mind using the Blizzard downloader?
A stand-alone program using bittorent like technique.
The Starcraft II movies section seems to have it as the only download option.

It's slightly more complicated than an ordinary download and I've no idea how it fares against bittorent hating ISPs.

[OneSadCookie]

AFAIK the Blizzard downloader is just a bittorrent client. Certainly it uses the bittorrent ports...