MMO dev fools pirates with torrent data ‘leak’

develop-online.net

17 points·bensummers··6 comments

Um... it doesn't sound like they "fooled pirates" it sounds like they took advantage of the bittorrent protocol for exactly what it was designed for: distributing large files.

I don't even think that what they're doing is particularly novel. Blizzard has been distributing World of Warcraft via bittorrent for a while now, and other games I've downloaded have essentially had their own front-end on a torrent client.

What I think is more interesting though is the idea of distributing it for free on channels that are usually limited to less legal endeavors, and later patching in a monetization scheme.

I always thought it would be a good anti-piracy strategy to seed trackers with your own subtly broken cracks (a crack that intentionally stops working after 2 weeks, for example). The key is to upload your fake crack before anyone gets around to making a real one.

This wasn't an anti-piracy measure.

The game was free to play, but they uploaded it to sites such as The Pirate Bay to distribute it. They mention that people have been put off by the game due to the large file size (excess of 500mb, I think) which is generally not a daunting feature to those who use torrents.

The didn't really fool anyone, per se... they just took advantage of distribution channels.

My comment is only tangentially related to the article. I'm not implying what they did was an anti-piracy measure, only that there are other ways to use bittorrent creatively.

Introversion did just that for Darwinia in 2005.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news250806introversion

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