Hello all,

My website has a data transfer allowance of 15 GB a month (500 MB per day). I can theoretically take 500 downloads of my game if its size is at 1MB. I am wondering how many downloads a reasonably well-known game gets every month. Is anybody facing more downloads than their bandwidth allowance and getting a huge bill at the end of each month?

@Steve: How much data is transferred at Dexterity each month?

Any suggestions for tackling this and hosting providers that are generous with bandwidth welcome!

I go through selected hosting(selectedhosting.com (http://www.selectedhosting.com)). Never had a single problem. We've had months with almost 100gigs and still no problem. The only limitation is disk space, we only get 300megs. Although they did just offer to give us more disk space at $1 for every 100 megs per month.

Anyway, if you're looking for a mirror then let me know. Always happy to host files whenever it's needed.

www.fileburst.com is a good alternative to using your regular web host. They give you unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth, then you just pay $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth used.

It has a very nice control panel and stats, and their customer support, on the few occasions that I've used it, has been fast and helpful.

Between our various bandwidth providers (our own dedicated server, fileburst, getafile), we chew through a few hundred GB each month, most of which is from file downloads. These forums alone account for 2GB per month.

Offloading much of our bandwidth to fileburst.com saves us quite a bit of money (averaging less than $1 per GB), and we haven't had any problems with them.

Bandwidth costs sometimes take indies by surprise. If your demo is very popular and fairly large, you could end up actually losing money if your registration rate is weak.

If you have a product that has any popularity at all, you will not be able to host your downloads on any normal web account.

We have our own dedicated servers, plus use several file download services. Our bandwidth bills are thousands of dollars per month. Good, reliable bandwidth is extremely important, if you try to go cheap it will cost you.

@Gmicek : Thanks for the offer and when I am ready I will ask you :)

What about hosts that say they allow unlimited data transfer? Are they speaking the truth or is it just a ploy to sign you up? Will they tolerate say 100+ GB of transfer every month? If they do, why are services like Getafile, Fileburst popular?

Does the bandwidth bill get worrying when the game is really popular (like those of Dexterity or Goodsol) or does any game listed on most download sites generate that many downloads?

Thanks.

Originally posted by jaggu

What about hosts that say they allow unlimited data transfer? Are they speaking the truth or is it just a ploy to sign you up? Will they tolerate say 100+ GB of transfer every month? If they do, why are services like Getafile, Fileburst popular?

Actually most hosting companies that say "unlimited bandwidth" are pretty much lying. They usually have a clause in the contract that specifies that the unlimited bandwidth only applies to HTML files, so they can get away with saying "unlimited bandwidth" which really doesn't mean that at all. So once you get over a certain amount of bandwidth they'll either shut you down or bill you an insane amount of money (a few thousand is not uncommon) or both. Gmicek's host is an exception not the rule.

There was a thread on this in Gamedev.net's business forum but the search feature is off so I can't look for it.

Originally posted by Fenix Down
Actually most hosting companies that say "unlimited bandwidth" are pretty much lying. They usually have a clause in the contract that specifies that the unlimited bandwidth only applies to HTML files, so they can get away with saying "unlimited bandwidth" which really doesn't mean that at all. So once you get over a certain amount of bandwidth they'll either shut you down or bill you an insane amount of money (a few thousand is not uncommon) or both. Gmicek's host is an exception not the rule.

You're totally right about that. I think that's why I'm always mentioning Selected Hosting. I've been through the whole 'go with an 'unlimited' provider then get the shaft a couple months later after finding out it only includes HTML files' experience, definitely not fun.

A lot of us "old timers" we're able to start out when most things didn't cost anything. Plenty of free filehosting, and at it's peak the internet was fueled with investment capital freeing the need for site to actully be profitable and we all reaped the rewards for that.

This allowed folks like Download.com, ZDNet, <insert just about any download site> and a boat load of free FTP servers to operate without cost to the people hosting files.

Sadly, most of that has now past. To be listed on search engines, you pay. To be downloaded, you pay. Heck now you pay to be at Download sites like Download.com and they don't even review your stuff. Tucows will review your game still, but they have fees now for doing so. Some folks are crying foul play, saying that we the developers make the download sites compelling, so we shouldn't have to pay.

The upside is that for those that have the funds, it grants you better exposure to customers.

Much of the diversity of the net has being consolidated. Zdnet has long since been swallowed by Cnet and lobotomized into something that really is only Cnet with a name change.


Now my point isn't to rant about how back in the day things were great. But that it's just harder for the little guy to get his foot in the door. The internet is going to continue to be a Pay for Play sorta thing. Paying for hosting your files is just a fact of life now.


One thing that Download.com is playing around with is a Zazaa like distributed download scheme. Now they are currently in beta, so I don't know for sure what their goal will be, but I would imagine that they will want some money to be included in the program.

But it does seems like if a person could tap into distributed file hosting that could at least alleviate some of the entry level issues.

You could argue somewhat that Tucows is able to host downloads still becasue of thier distibuted nature, but I'm sure thats drawing to a close as well, they are chargeing for more and more things.

"Unlimited bandwidth" is just a marketing ploy and IMHO an outright lie as well. If you use 100GB, you'll be booted right quick.

Simtel seems to host game files free of cost. Any of you got files at Simtel? Any pros and cons with it? Why arent they going the route of Download.com?

One problem with counting on a place like simtel for bandwidth is that it means you have to send customers AWAY from your site to get the download. Not to mention when they get there, they are overloaded with options (all the new links on nav bars, plus the way you have to select a city to download from, etc). They may give up, or they may not continue to browse through your site and see what else you have to offer. Some other download sites require that users sign up before downloading...another big no-no.

Hmm... I'm not sure simtel hosts games. I tried to put one there some time ago, and I did get a reject message saying they did not host games. Their policies might have changed though, I don't know.

Personally I have all my downloads on a server at my university and I get about 200 GB / month for free (!). The bad part is that when I finish my studies I will have to find new homes for my files and that might be easier said than done, concerning the amount of bandwidth... I'm hoping that I can get some free hosting on some nice site considering the fact the the games are free.

Simtel do host games now. They changed their policy last year.
I haven't got any experience of using them though.

Has anyone done a cost analysis of hosting your own servers? Even if it's just a cheap linux box acting as an ftp server.

What type of bandwidth would you need hooked up to a server to handle say 100 Gig a month?

-j

This is just another one of those reasons why I struggle to make my games small. Ive seen some indie guys release 100MB demos. what on earth are they thinking?
If I cant make my game under 10MB then I dont see it as economic for the web, and my latest game is a tad over 3MB.
The other solution is to improve your game and up the conversion rate, if every 10th customer buys your game, you can afford it to be 100MB ;)