AGDC: OGSi and BitTorrent Partner to Manage Gaming Content Delivery

Online Game Services and Internet file delivery service BitTorrent have announced at the Austin Game Developers Conference a partnership to develop a download solution for online gaming, augmenting OGSi's games hosting and transport offering with BitTorrent's peer-assisted content delivery service to enable game companies to handle traffic spikes. The OGSi download platform will be offered to all OGSi online game customers with game download and video streaming requirements, with the specific aim of reducing the cost to scale infrastructure for the unpredictable and unscheduled user patterns common in the online game industry. The joint solution also allows developers to serve parts of the world where robust server infrastructure may not exist, and network connections are limited or erratic. The service also provides game developers with detailed reporting on the entire infrastructure, including the managed BitTorrent peer network, so that they can view the server, CDN, and peer-network activity from the user’s perspective, including download statistics and performance. Under the agreement, both parties are evaluating the expansion of their pre-existing relationship in the form of additional data center services from GNi (of which OGSi is a business unit) and support for BitTorrent’s Center of Excellence, which will provide real-time demonstrations of peer-to-peer download acceleration. “By leveraging the efficiency of BitTorrent DNA, game developers using the OGSi platform won’t be punished for their popularity. In fact, with BitTorrent, the more popular the game is, the faster the downloads are for users,” said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. OGSi CEO James Hursthouse commented: “We are extremely pleased to be working with BitTorrent on this solution. We believe that the combination of GNi’s extremely high-quality network, along with the flexibility and reach of the BitTorrent DNA solution provides exactly the right balance of power, price/performance and quality that the games industry is looking for.”