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Pando mediabooster??
XXXXL
Member Posts: 3
The other day I thought I´d popp into Lotro and see whats going on since its f2p so I downloaded the gameclient. After I was done I noticed that I had unusual high latency when playing other games online.
Turns out that with the Lotro gameclient came "Pando mediabooster" - a program that allows Turbine to use my computer and my bandwith to distribute Lotro gameclient to others for free. I knew Turbine is cashhungry but this is ridicoulus and I wonder if its actually legal. After approaching Turbine about payment for this service I unknowingly provided for and , not so surprisingly, got no answer I decided to unistall both Pando and Lotro.
Perhaps its common knowledge but I´ve never heard that some gaming-companies did this so I thought I´d give a heads-up about it for others to know.
Comments
Lots of games use Pando Media Booster, LoTRO, LoL, Asda and several others. It's a fairly common program for MMO clients to use. WoW even uses a bit torrent style peer to peer patching system, I do not know if it's PMB however.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
A lot of F2P games use Pando, which is sad b/c the program is practically a virus. Luckily, several F2P companies also provide torrent downloads as an alternative. AFAIK Turbine doesn't however.
Edit: And yes, it says very clearly when installing the game that PMB will also be installed. However, this was not always the case.
http://www.pandonetworks.com/products/pando-media-booster
"Pando Media Booster accelerates the delivery of large files. It intelligently delivers small pieces of the media file from multiple sources including CDN servers as well as other users who consume the same content ("Peer Cloud")."
Yeah I noticed the "virus" reference too, I laughed.
Seriously.
It tells you its installing it.
You can uninstall it.
It only servers the files up as a torrent as long as you actually keep teh download. (If you delete the install folder, Pando has nothing to serve and is dormant.)
Its harly the end of the world.
Actually I would rather use Pando fo r download than some custom torrent in the installer, as Pando is a known system with a small control panel that lest you throttle bandwith use.
I fail to see the issue. REALLY. DDO only use Pando for the large initial download. After that you can delete it.
True, you can unistall it and still play the game and receive updates.
Noli sinere te ab improbis opprimi
Well, it may not be intended to be a virus but the fact of the matter is that it is a huge resource hog and is pretty much the equivilant to malware on lower end systems. Rednecksith is actually correct in his statement.
If you know that its just to uninstall Pando after the game-client is downloaded then its np as some of you say, but the problem was that I didn´t know about it and Turbine never mentioned it when I downloaded the client. And yes, I do think that allowing Turbine to use some 80% of my bandwith without my understanding is a big issue.
And I also don´t understand why some of you feel the need to belittle me and try to make me look like an idiot when I simply try to adress something concerning Lotro that I think is a problem. There might be more "dumbasses" like myself out there.
This is my last reply in this matter since I got to say what I wanted. Now make fun of my ignorance and stupidity as much as ya want hehe.
See the edit in post #5 of this thread.
I dunno. Calling it a virus is stretch to me. A virus gets onto a computer via deception through links, pictures, and other things. Viruses aren't particularly designed to give a warning and check a permission box to install onto your computer.
One thing that you can do, that others have mentioned, is to uninstall Pando and be done with it, rather than finger point and call it names on a forum because you don't like the software.
Soooo... since it asks you for permission to install, is it still a "virus" then?
Then it provides a link to mycleanpc.com...............................
But yousee: THEY DID TELL YOU!
Look at the download page: http://www.lotro.com/en/game/download
There is a link to an FAQ: http://support.turbine.com/ics/support/kbanswer.asp?deptID=24001&task=knowledge&questionID=2797
In that you can read about the use of Pando and it even links to a specific Pando FAQ: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?290438-Pando-Media-Booster-FAQ-and-info-Updated-9-17-2010
And what do you know in that FAQ it states:
Edit: I messed up and used the DDO version. LotRO hides it a bit more, but not much...
Whenever a program uses your computer's resources and your network's bandwidth without letting you know, it's considered bad.
You can all act like smartasses and claim that anyone who doesn't know what Pando does is an idiot, but it honestly operates on malicious grounds.
Any legitimate piece of software, that was at least purchased, would quickly see a crippling lawsuit headed their way.
Nobody is being a smartass. You fail to read the information available on the download site. Nothing was hidden for you. You just pressed OK without looking reading the info available on the download page.
Any lawsiut would crumble the second this was pointed out. The information was readily available.