NOTE: This is the second in a series of posts on P2P technology and game publishing. See the first post, User Engagement: A Simple and Intuitive P2P Participation Policy and our main P2P Best Practices page. Please subscribe to our news feed or check back soon for more. – Ed

As an early developer of commercial P2P solutions for games, Solid State Networks has often had to work to educate customers, partners and regulators about how the technology actually works, how it can/should be implemented, etc. Still, “P2P technology” is commonly confused with the attributes of its implementation which can, in turn, result in unintended consequences. This happened in 2009 when the U.S. House of Representatives introduced HR 1319, a bill also known as the “Informed P2P User Act”.

This bill, as originally introduced, would have required all P2P applications to comply with a restrictive set of rules for the stated purpose of preventing the inadvertent sharing of personally identifiable information (PII) by any user of any P2P network. At the time, we thought a more appropriate name for this bill would have been The Uninformed P2P User Act.

Fortunately, through the tireless efforts of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), led by its CEO Marty Lafferty, along with input from key DCIA members including Solid State Networks, subsequent drafts of the bill included language that excludes certain P2P implementations that are clearly not capable of sharing PII. These applications, such as those used for content delivery, serve a very different function than the file-sharing applications that have motivated the bill’s sponsors to pursue this legislation. As a result of the efforts from the DCIA and Congressional and FTC staff, commercial P2P delivery solutions will not be unduly impacted by H.R. 1319 should the bill (which has since passed in the House) become law.

HR 1319 was indeed a close call and should be something of a wake-up call for both P2P vendors and the game publishers that benefit from P2P technology. Game publishers, whether you are using a commercial P2P solution or rolling your own P2P implementation, should be on the lookout for things that might impact your ability to utilize P2P technology in the future. There are still many open questions with respect to the use of P2P technology for game delivery (or any type of content files) to and among consumers that need to be understood for P2P to mature as a widely adopted consumer technology, such as:

• Who owns the resources that power a P2P network? Who has the right to use these resources?
• How can a player’s resources be controlled and used? How should they be used?
• How are decisions made concerning the use of these resources? Who should make those decisions?
• What role should players have in how their resources are utilized?
• What are all of the benefits of P2P? How are those benefits distributed among publishers, P2P vendors and players?
• What are the costs of P2P? How are those costs distributed among publishers, P2P vendors and players?
• What are the requirements for disclosure? Are the minimum legal requirements enough?
• What risks and potential liabilities are associated with implementing P2P for game delivery? How can those risks be mitigated?

Today, Solid State Networks is publishing the first edition of The Game Publisher’s Guide to P2P Delivery. This guide is designed to help you understand P2P technologies and their various implementations so that you can formulate your own answers to these questions. We will be updating this document as necessary to reflect changes in the technology and in the games industry. To get the document, use this simple request form and we’ll email you a link to it.

In conjunction with the release of the Publisher’s Guide, we are also publishing our own Best Practices for P2P Delivery with Online Games. These Best Practices represent our belief in the core values of transparency, control and privacy—directives which should be adopted by publishers who value long-term relationships with players.

The Best Practices also follow the concept of User Engagement: A Simple and Intuitive Peer Participation Policy.

Yes, we develop software for P2P game delivery, but we are gamers, too. We hope that our efforts to inform and educate the game community will result in a constructive industry discussion that ultimately promotes the continued adoption of P2P technologies by game publishers, trust of the technology among gamers and the avoidance of impediments often caused by legislated regulation.

We welcome any and all input from publishers, gamers, developers and other commercial P2P solution providers. If you have a comment or question please let us know using the comments section below:

Tags: P2P Best Practices