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The gaming industry has been using peer to peer downloads for a long time AFAIK. Unsure if they still do, pretty sure the Battle.net client did it.
by scary-size 4y ago
The gaming industry has been using peer to peer downloads for a long time AFAIK. Unsure if they still do, pretty sure the Battle.net client did it.
- smileybarry 4y agoIt was used in the WoW downloader pre-Battle.NET, they've moved off that and switched to CDNs (mostly Akamai IIRC) & dynamic patching, i.e.: Battle.NET computes differences and gets a diff. Steam never used P2P downloading but they've had deals with ISPs and communities really early and made their own "CDN" full of caching servers everywhere, so if you waited a few hours to update, it might make it to your local server in time. Now I think they're on Akamai as well.
- scary-size 4y agoOh, right, there was the WoW launcher before battle.net. I think I have another game in mind which used this, but I can’t really remember. Would love to get more insights on the economics of this (p2p vs. cdn).
- smileybarry 4y agoWoW popularized it and a lot of “WoW killer” MMOs had P2P, but I never saw it “work” to be honest.