eunichron wrote on Jan 8, 2012, 17:19:

Muscular Beaver wrote on Jan 8, 2012, 16:48:

Dirwulf wrote on Jan 8, 2012, 16:43:

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Jan 8, 2012, 15:47:

Krovven wrote on Jan 8, 2012, 14:56:
While I agree completely, I hate p2p downloaders, and that it's default is on, but they are hardly being "sneaky".

WoW and SC2 are the same way, which means 10's of millions of people are fully aware of how the Blizzard uses a p2p downloader that is defaulted to on. It's only sharing while you are downloading.

If they weren't being sneaky they would provide an option during the install to enable or disable it. Even when installers try to change your default search engine - which is a sleazy business tactic - they provide a tick-box in the installer, which most people simply overlook anyway. Blizzard doesn't ask for permission to use your bandwidth, it just does it by default. It would be like buying a car and then they put a billboard up on your lawn because somewhere in the smallprint it said so - heck, even in that situation you'd know it was happening; the Blizzard downloader hides that it's uploading.

They are exploiting YOUR resources for THEIR commercial gain.

Every Blizzard downloader has had the ability to disable peer to peer downloading in the options. Whoever said it still uses peer to peer even when you uncheck the box is smoking crack. And not every installer has a checkbox to not install a stealth bar of some type. Starcraft did not have an open beta, and it sold just fine with a constant connection. Blizzard is as far from Ubi as you can get. They aren't using always on only as a form of DRM. They are using it for many different reasons.

I guess you never disabled that check, else you would still be downloading WoW patches from 2007.

I disable it every time and still get 1MB/s+ downloads with no upload. At least for me their HTTP direct download is usually faster than their P2P download.