Update 28/07/15: Skyforge’s My.com installer now asks users if they’d like to seed their files to other users. If you’re unhappy seeding files over a peer-to-peer network, you can uncheck a box to opt-out.
Skyforge is the new Allods Team MMO that Obsidian had a hand in. Install the free-to-play client out of curiosity, however, and you might miss a quirk in its peer-to-peer system. The launcher feeds download files from your PC to other new players without asking – causing upset on /r/Games.
“What many of you are saying makes sense,” said Skyforge’s new North American producer. “I can’t guarantee changes or when they will come, but I will say that this is something I personally am going to discuss with our team and developers to solve.”
The problem many players have isn’t so much that publishers My.com rely on a peer-to-peer system to distribute Skyforge – but that it happens without their knowledge. Some carefully manage their data use to avoid the wrath of ISPs – and suddenly found that they were exceeding their monthly caps.
That’s because once Skyforge is downloaded, until disabled in the settings, the launcher will constantly seed to other PCs. Coupled with a client that automatically opens at Windows start-up, that can mean a lot of data – and some players have reported connection and latency issues to boot.
“I totally get where many of you are coming from on this peer to peer and the My.com client starting when Windows does thing,” wrote producer Aaron Biedma on Reddit.
Biedma wants, “at the very least”, an option during install to prevent the client from appearing at start-up.
“For the peer to peer downloading, you do need it to download the game/patches but we can discuss some other way to notify players that you can change the settings for this and saving the patch files,” he went on.
“The main thing is making sure we are transparent on this.”
Have you had a fiddle around with Skyforge yet? In the endgame you become a god to a cult of NPC followers, so that’s definitely new.