IGN Just Made My Skin Crawl

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 1:09 am

While I'm not usually one to rant about something, today started off with something that I believe cannot be ignored.
So here's the story, a couple days ago, Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds was released for download on IGN
and you could download the game, play for an hour, and then buy the full game if you'd like, for $40 with nothing more to
download. Sounds like a nice deal right? So I started the 704meg download, or attempted to atleast, as since I use
Firebird, and IGN doesn't have a plugin for their downloading client made for Mozilla-based browsers, I found myself having
to dust off ol' IE and start the download. Now I realize, I agree'd to install the plugin, but I thought it was for a CLIENT only,
only later did I find out that no, infact, it sets up a server so that when people want the file, you can help send it to them!
Now, I love bit-torrent, and I support it fully, but that's different, you know up-front what you're getting into. This? Oh contrare!
You know nothing. Even after I closed IE (frustrated that the file never finished downloading after stalling for 5 hours), and rebooted,
this little server continued to plague my bandwidth. GRRR! This type of practice should not be allowed darnit. Hell, I'd take Fileplanet's
"wait-in-line" scheme before I took another dose of this. Ok, I'll end this rant there, but I thought I'd make all gamers out there
aware of what they're doing, so that if you'd like, you can avoid it.

Ultimate Fanboy Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 508

Yea, I've heard of several sites that do that.

If I have to install a program to download a file, its just not worth it for me. Now that everyone thinks they can have full control over your PC, I rarely download anything from the internet anymore.

UO Staff Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 524 Location: Atlanta

Personally, I think that if we start making it so that the big companies realize that that s**t won't go over (i.e. IGN's scheme, and other sites that do similar things) then maybe they'll go back to what DID work. Valve once mentioned making HL2 only work through STEAM. When enough people started complaining, they announced that they will be doing a box launch as well.

Which reminds me - everyone, check the soap box for my latest conspiracy theory.