Why do downloads have a 365 day expiry?

[Lah]

Is there any good reason that the downloads for games that have been purchased have a download expiry date?

It's just that I thought I would get back into playing some of the old strategic command games. I've lost my backups and now find I'm not entitled to download them again after the 365 days since purchase. What's the point in an expiry date?

So that blows my strategic command 2, Patten drives East and Pacific theater games .

Correction: I do have the Patten drives East disc but it is useless without SC2 !

[Doug Williams]

It plainly says on the order screen when you purchase a game from BFC that you should backup the file because the download link will expire after 10 downloads or 365 days.

The good news is BFC will give you another download link that will be good for another 10 downloads or 365 days for $5, if you submit a ticket to the help desk.

BFC does not follow the Steam, GoG, or Blizzard business model in that they will not offer unlimited digital storage of the games you purchase from them.

[Ranger33]

If BFC is unwilling to host the files themselves, why don't they offer the downloads as torrents so that we can seed the games for others past the 1 year window. I've asked this several times and never got a reply. It's exactly the sort of thing torrents are good for. It's a win-win for everyone.

I was on the fence about whether to get Commander: The Great War at Matrix or Strategic Command WW1 here and this policy plus the DRM was the deciding factor in going with Commander.

[Doug Williams]

Just save the file to a thumb drive, CDR/DVR, external hard drive, or an online service such as Dropbox.

[Ranger33]

Just save the file to a thumb drive, CDR/DVR, external hard drive, or an online service such as Dropbox.

The problem with all of those (besides Dropbox) is that they can be lost/damaged/corrupted just as easily as anything else. I have CMSF, CMA, CMBN, and CMFI plus the modules, all tucked away on an external HD I bought just for that purpose (and storing my Steam library). Trouble is that some days it's moody and doesn't want to work, so I know it's going to fail eventually. Now I'm probably going to get a big thumb drive just for CM, which I will have to hang onto forever and hope I don't lose, which never happens, as we all know

Dropbox requires you to upload what you just downloaded, but at extremely slow rates (for me anyway). It would take days/weeks to upload just one install file.

I think if BFC wanted to be really progressive they could offer up Gustav Line as a torrent download just to try it out. The more people that download the game, the faster the downloads get, and the less strain on BFC's bandwidth. It would take virtually no effort on their part to try it out.

[Michael Emrys]

Now I'm probably going to get a big thumb drive just for CM, which I will have to hang onto forever and hope I don't lose, which never happens, as we all know

Get two and keep one in a lockbox at your bank.

Michael

[Redwolf]

The OP has a point. BFC's policy here is ridiculous.

Whatever way they "personalize" the distribution file for a specific customer (they do, right? Otherwise why bother with this nonsense?) they should do it on the fly when downloading. Probably already do but it's very hard to imagine what a valid technical reason for this restriction would be.

Anyone wants to compared md5 checksums from their CMBN download? Would be interesting to see whether they are personalized or not.

[Doug Williams]

Dunno. I have no idea why BFC has this policy, other than some heavy handed attempt to cut down on software piracy. As someone who hasn't pirated any software since my shoebox of Commodore 64 floppy disks in the mid 1980s, I share your annoyance with this situation.

Buying a couple of thumb drives is trivial to anyone who lives near a Wal-Mart or a Best Buy. Personally, I use Dropbox to backup my files, because, unlike Ranger33, I find it to be efficient and fast. Yes, I upgraded beyond the free version.

[Redwolf]

Here's my md5 of the original 'CM_Normandy_Setup.exe':

5c8aa905fc004f709604cc588ae558eb

size/date: 1378610716 May 17 2011 CM_Normandy_Setup.exe

Anybody care to compare?

[Schrullenhaft]

We have the '365 day / 10 download attempt' policy because we do not host the files ourselves. Most of the files are hosted on a third party's high-speed, distributed network. They charge us a significant bandwidth fee to host our files. So we have to either limit the number of downloads or how long they are available for. Otherwise we would eventually lose money on every download we sell.

It wouldn't be a good business decision to create our own distributed network and pay for a high speed connection (which is VERY expensive). Therefore we need to go with a vendor to provide this service, which still remains expensive. Bandwidth isn't free and we don't sell anywhere near enough copies to make some sort of 'cloud' service with our downloads. Most of the services that offer unlimited downloads are distributors of a LARGE number of titles. These distributors take a huge chunk of the revenue for each sale in order to distribute through them. For a large number of smaller developers the visibility of these large distributors is part of the allure of using them and dealing with the much smaller per-copy revenue that results (in the hopes/expectations that a far larger number of sales will result).

While torrents sound like a good idea in some ways, the problem would be that often a short while after the initial release the throughput would drop drastically. A lot of people would probably stop seeding once they've gotten the file. The other issue with torrents is that it may make the games more visible to potential hackers (since anyone could download them).

The download system is only considered a method of delivering the files for the customer to archive in some manner for permanent access.

[Ranger33]

One can already get cracked versions of almost every Combat Mission game, so that ship has sailed. I was just thinking it would be better if you guys offered the torrent through an official channel. It doesn't take that many seeds to work, and it would alleviate the complaints of "I lost my files and it's been a year and now I have to pay $5!"

I'm no tech whiz, but I know that private trackers are a thing, so you could control access that way.

[Redwolf]

We have the '365 day / 10 download attempt' policy because we do not host the files ourselves. Most of the files are hosted on a third party's high-speed, distributed network. They charge us a significant bandwidth fee to host our files. So we have to either limit the number of downloads or how long they are available for. Otherwise we would eventually lose money on every download we sell.

It wouldn't be a good business decision to create our own distributed network and pay for a high speed connection (which is VERY expensive). Therefore we need to go with a vendor to provide this service, which still remains expensive. Bandwidth isn't free and we don't sell anywhere near enough copies to make some sort of 'cloud' service with our downloads. Most of the services that offer unlimited downloads are distributors of a LARGE number of titles. These distributors take a huge chunk of the revenue for each sale in order to distribute through them. For a large number of smaller developers the visibility of these large distributors is part of the allure of using them and dealing with the much smaller per-copy revenue that results (in the hopes/expectations that a far larger number of sales will result).

While torrents sound like a good idea in some ways, the problem would be that often a short while after the initial release the throughput would drop drastically. A lot of people would probably stop seeding once they've gotten the file. The other issue with torrents is that it may make the games more visible to potential hackers (since anyone could download them).

The download system is only considered a method of delivering the files for the customer to archive in some manner for permanent access.

Couple remarks.

First of all, can you confirm or deny that the downloads for different people are identical? Or are they personalized or signed with the "owner" encoded in them?

Your perception of torrents isn't quite accurate. It is true that at first you have a lot more seeders than later, and that it drops off later with new downloaders hitting whoever is left to seed, which presumably is you guys. However, a downloader instantly becomes an upload and serves file blocks that it already retrieved to other downloaders, even before the download is finished. The protocol has been carefully designed to maximize this, specifically it makes sure that people don't get the same blocks from the possible single first uploader so that the different downloaders can instantly start distributing blocks to each other. In practice that means that if you are the "primary" (always on) seeder you either get very few downloaders (which then shouldn't be a bandwidth or cost problem) or if you get hit a lot you instantly get load taken off you.

This property isn't very well understood but it has been built into the design of bittorrent, downloaders are kind of forced to be distributors, too, and right away. I am not aware of any bittorrent client that allows you to turn off distribution of blocks without hacking up the source code.

I urge you to consider this carefully. Also contrary to many people's perception bittorrent is a lot safer for the downloader because the download is always securely checksummed (btw, did you ever repair that patch file on your third-party site that was modified?).

You also have a loyal fan base and you might be in a position to ask people to keep their bittorrent clients open so that the load is shared (people can limit the bandwidth in their clients).

Finally, have you looked at what bandwidth costs at Amazon's EC2?

[Sixxkiller]

No offense Redwolf but how hard would it be for you and all customers to just buy a thumb drive or back-up device and store your own purchases? Stuff like this costs money and adds to the back end costs that BFC doesnt pass on to the customer. Plenty of companies give you a certain amount of time to download so its not like BFC is being unreasonable. And bit torrents are hardly safer LOL.

But seriously you guys thinking you get to download and re-download the games in perpetuity really makes no sense to me.

[Ranger33]

Sixxkiller, I feel like you didn't read any of the above posts at all. A torrent would reduce the bandwidth costs for BFC, especially at the release of a new game, and cost them exactly zilch to implement. It would take all of five minutes to set up. If you think a torrent link provided directly by BFC would somehow be dangerous, you are simply uninformed.

I understand BFC's position on not providing direct downloads forever. It's perfectly reasonable. That said, there's no reason to ignore a perfectly good alternative.

If they are concerned about piracy, there are private trackers, like I mentioned above, which restrict access to who can download the files. Besides that, it doesn't really matter, since one trip to google reveals cracked versions of most every BFC game are already available. The DRM, like all DRM, is completely ineffective. The saving grace of the titles that haven't been cracked is simply their niche status.

The question is why pirates should get free downloads forever via torrents, while paying customers do not, when the exact same technology is right there waiting to be used by BFC.

[Redwolf]

Right, I was merely commenting on some incorrect assumptions, especially about bittorrent.

As for other companies who have a time limit on downloads - which ones?

Steam doesn't.

Amazon's game download platform doesn't.

Matrixgames doesn't.

So - who?

[Wodin]

I have it backed up on two cloud websites..Skydrive and 4Shared..aswell as on two separate internal Hard Drives. After losing my CMSF modules through a virus on a HD and having to pay the small fee of $5 each to get them back I've made sure to put them on cloud websites and on my other internal HD.

The files aren't really huge and took a few hours to upload..just had it running in the background so it wasn't any problem at all.

[Wodin]

One can already get cracked versions of almost every Combat Mission game, so that ship has sailed. I was just thinking it would be better if you guys offered the torrent through an official channel. It doesn't take that many seeds to work, and it would alleviate the complaints of "I lost my files and it's been a year and now I have to pay $5!"

I'm no tech whiz, but I know that private trackers are a thing, so you could control access that way.

Really..I've never seen the new games on torrent sites..ever..

[Redwolf]

I have it backed up on two cloud websites..Skydrive and 4Shared..aswell as on two separate internal Hard Drives. After losing my CMSF modules through a virus on a HD and having to pay the small fee of $5 each to get them back I've made sure to put them on cloud websites and on my other internal HD.

The files aren't really huge and took a few hours to upload..just had it running in the background so it wasn't any problem at all.

That's nice.

One unfortunate fact of this whole matter is that BFC doesn't even tell us whether we have identical install files or not. If they are identical we could all feed out of the same cloud backup, you know?

It's just idiotic. Complete waste of everybody's time and needlessly pissed off customers.

[Ranger33]

Really..I've never seen the new games on torrent sites..ever..

At a glance I found everything but CMFI and the Commonwealth module. Including the Strategic Command files that OP is looking for.

[Wodin]

Never seen any of the CMx2 games except CMSF paradox version. Seen about two SC games the first and Global..Thing is you wouldn't be able to patch them anyway.

I'd never pirate any game I know I will love\enjoy. Nor if it comes from a small developer\publisher either.

[Ranger33]

Well I wouldn't either, I'm just pointing out that the files are out there for the downloading. Free (the download, I mean). Why would BFC not use the same technology to benefit their paying customers?

[Schrullenhaft]

To answer a previous question, are downloads 'personalized' (basically preventing their sharing)? No, they are not. The files are all the same and one person's copy can be installed and activated with a different license key.

[Redwolf]

To answer a previous question, are downloads 'personalized' (basically preventing their sharing)? No, they are not. The files are all the same and one person's copy can be installed and activated with a different license key.

Then why wouldn't "somebody" just set up a bittorrent so that people can retrieve these goods?

I put "somebody" in quotes because I think that even though there is no need for BFC to seed, I think that the torrent file should be hosted by BFC. That is to establish the correct checksums for the resulting files from a domain that is official, ideally over https.

[Ranger33]

I'll ask the obvious hypothetical question, if one were to provide a legit torrent or cloud link providing the (non-cracked) setup files to the next poster of a "Why can't I download my files again!?" thread, what would be the response from BFC? Indifference, ban, legal action? Frowny faces?

[Kanonier Reichmann]

I predict a ban from legal action with frowny faces that have an indifferent look about them.

Regards

KR