Digital distribution allows games to be published, marketed, and distributed electronically rather than through physical media like discs. It provides benefits like reducing the time for players to start playing and minimizing download sizes and disk space requirements. Game streaming renders the game on remote servers and streams video and input to the user's device, while assets streaming downloads game assets to the local device for rendering. While streaming is still developing, digital distribution can currently efficiently distribute games by splitting installs into parts, keeping package file orders consistent for small updates, limiting the number of files, and testing with long paths and Unicode characters.

1. Prepare for Distribution
Artem Petrov
Development
Team Lead
1

2. Target audience 2
• PC games
• Partially applicable to consoles
• Mostly useful for free-to-play
Publishers, developers

3. What is digital distribution?
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4. 4
Publishing
Market research
Manufacturing
Advertising
Localization
Distribution
Feedback
Maintenance
Retention

5. Let’s distinguish digital distribution and game streaming
At least in this presentation
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6. Game Streaming 6
Next generation
Video streaming
• Server-side rendering
• Video stream from server to client
• Input stream from client to server
Assets streaming
• Client-side rendering
• Game requests assets in advance
• Assets are being downloaded during gameplay

7. Game Streaming 7
Streaming types comparison
Feature Video Assets
Efforts to integrate Medium -> Low High -> Medium
Time to play ~ Zero ~ Minutes (first sessions)
Network bandwidth impact High Medium
Network latency impact High Low
Picture quality depends on Bandwidth
Streaming provider
Local PC
Sharing rendering HW Yes No

8. 8
Streaming is still future
for the most
But it’s about to change in several years

9. Back to digital distribution
How to distribute your game efficiently
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10. What is our* goal? 10
• Reduce time to play
• Minimize amount of downloaded data
• Minimize disk space requirements
*your

11. Install size 11
Tip #1
Split game client into several parts

12. Install size 12
Tip #1
Split game client into several parts
• Users start playing earlier
• Less disk space required in general
• Not all users need the highest resolution that you
may offer
• Simpler DLC implementation

13. Updates size 13
Tip #2
Keep your packages in order

14. Updates size 14
Tip #2
Keep your packages in order
• Preserve file order in a package
• Don't change content if you don't need to
(timestamps, markers, etc.)

15. Updates size 15
Tip #3
Follow single case style

16. Files amount 16
Tip #4
Limit the number of files to 10K
maximum

17. Files amount 17
Tip #4
Limit the number of files to 10K
maximum
…but keeping everything in single file is also bad

18. Environment 18
Tip #5
Test with long (and containing
Unicode) installation path

19. Environment 19
Tip #5
Test with long (and containing
Unicode) installation path
…and avoid long paths inside game folder

20. Fair play 20
Tip #6
Think about client-side Anti-Cheat
in advance

21. Let’s summarize 21
What did we learn?

22. Questions!
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23. Thank you!
Feel free to contact me artem_petrov@wargaming.net
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