Also since games have gone to CD size I dont remember any shareware site
getting hit with a flood due to release of a popular title.

To be specific Ive been on the discussion lately about some long awaited
upcoming releases such as Dominions 3, and Space Empires V, and other
games with a rabid player base. The players want instant download
instead of waiting 3-5 days for delivery. Yet, developing an arrangment
which will allow that many to download games that size amounts to
something which does not appear as if it would improve on that time
frame. And even if one was created it would mostly fall dormant after
that initial rush for longer than it would take for the equipment to
become obsolete. It makes it more reasonable to "rent" space on some
other system.

Personally, my opinion, is that the server farms specializing in
offering this as a service are going to win out over people wanting to
do it themselves. Allow those companys to concentrate on spreading their
servers to many backbones, redundant pipes, load averaging systems, and
order tracking. The publishers will link to them for distribution
requests.

Here's another idea - what about releasing a big chunk of the game
(mainly assets, I would imagine) well in advance as a heavily
encrypted file that anyone can download for free? Then when the full
game comes out, anyone who got it just requires a relatively small
download that decrypts the first file and adds whatever code and
assets are needed to complete the game. Anyone keen enough to want it
in the first days should have been keen enough to inform themselves of
the need to get the asset file beforehand. And since it's freely
distributable, there's no harm getting it from any source if they
didn't.

If a 250MB download can be reduced to say 20MB, it should improve
matters quite a bit.

Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote in
news:MPG.1c77e853c8a5344a989e16@news.indigo.ie:

Here's another idea - what about releasing a big chunk of the game
(mainly assets, I would imagine) well in advance as a heavily
encrypted file that anyone can download for free? Then when the full
game comes out, anyone who got it just requires a relatively small
download that decrypts the first file and adds whatever code and
assets are needed to complete the game. Anyone keen enough to want it
in the first days should have been keen enough to inform themselves of
the need to get the asset file beforehand. And since it's freely
distributable, there's no harm getting it from any source if they
didn't.

If a 250MB download can be reduced to say 20MB, it should improve
matters quite a bit.

Interesting. At first I was going to say that it was fairly close to the
model of "allow anyone to offer the game for download at any site, and
only control the serial keys" which does handle alot of the problems
involved.

But as I thought about it I can see where your concept might work well.
Many games could provide the images, sounds, unit database, well ahead
of the actual executable part of the game. A final (and much smaller)
installer would give them the exe and might update a couple of items the
way a patch does.

My assumption has been that it's easier to get published online because
the quality of the title is not screened as tightly.