Does anyone else think that the idea behind torrenting, getting data out to the world without having to rely on retailers and publishers or high server costs, is probably the best thing to happen to any digital business since the magnetic tape has been invented? It's already hit the music and movie industries by letting independent films get distributed quickly through out a large population, especially in Europe. The question is, do you think that game companies should start adopting this technology and just start blowing off big publishers such as EA and Activision?

That depends. Is there a way to seperate it from illegal torrenting?

So you mean digital distribution? Because there are a lot of official torrents for various games, but honestly, people are not going to share and upload large games all the time...direct digital distribution, like Steam, is better.

And yes, Valve has been doing a great job passing up publishers...only using EA and others when those companies want to put Valve's games on consoles.

But publishers aren't some "middle-man"...they are providing a necessary service for developers who need their game distributed.

"people are not going to share and upload large games all the time..."

But you can force them to share as much or a little more than they download before it lets them finish, if you set up a system for that. Or perhaps give them credit if they share the download more if it has any kind of real money store, like Maple Story and such. Really, It's all in how you design the project.

Plus, it's always possible to have a dedicated seed with a very high bandwidth and just rely the nature of torrenting reducing your costs rather than trying to eliminate them.