What is your preferred file host?

[apocalypsetoday]

Hi guys,
Sorry if this has been asked recently but I couldn't find anything via search.

As a dev the last thing I want is my players to have to wait ages to get hold of my game.
With that in mind, what file host (on the approved file host list) do you prefer to use and why?

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

MEGA (pausability) > Zippy > Gofile = Workupload > Mixdrop (have to wait to start the free download) > Anonfiles (I've heard of malware on that site, plus I've had low download speeds)

 

[redknight00]

Anything that is not MEGA.

 

[Sphere42]

Artists seem to like google drive and dropbox and those do seem to work reasonably well, I rarely see any game links for those on here though.

Despite all the hate it gets MEGA is the only common option on here which actually gets me high download rates. Nopy was better, mediafire is alright for smaller downloads. Torrents are the only real option for the huge Illusion games modpacks.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Mega is apart due to its bandwidth limit.

Workupload always give me better speed than the others, except mega.

Zippyshare is good, same for Mediafire, while Gofile sometimes chock on the files and takes age.

Mixdrop don't works with JDownloader (well, it could with the captcha thingy) what is really annoying, and Anonfiles rarely give me more than 2KB/s speed.

All the others are either not working with smooth with a downloader, or have shitty speed.


In the end, there's no answer to OP question, because there isn't one file host that effectively offer a consistent service to everyone, whatever the moment of the day and whatever where they live. Well, none except Mega, but there's this fucking bandwidth limit. What mean that everyone will have a different favorite, but the most named favorite can possibly be one of the shittiest for the rest of the world.

 

[Meaning Less]

An actual poll with all options in this thread would have been cool

Probably: Gofile, Workupload, Zippyshare

 

[apocalypsetoday]

Thanks Everyone.
Google drive is a shame because I have plenty of storage and would love to use it but Google insists whoever you share the link with MUST be able to see your email address. Something I'm not comfortable with and it's probably why we don't see that very often on here.
What's everybody's thoughts on torrents?

An actual poll with all options in this thread would have been cool

The list of approved file hosts is a little too vast for a poll I think. Unless somebody could add the main ones?

 

[PoiluSansNom]

Thanks Everyone.
Google drive is a shame because I have plenty of storage and would love to use it but Google insists whoever you share the link with MUST be able to see your email address. Something I'm not comfortable with and it's probably why we don't see that very often on here.
What's everybody's thoughts on torrents?

The list of approved file hosts is a little too vast for a poll I think. Unless somebody could add the main ones?

Create a smurf Google Account, hehe... So it won't be your official email displaying and you'll be fine!

 

[apocalypsetoday]

Create a smurf Google Account, hehe... So it won't be your official email displaying and you'll be fine!

Then I'd have to pay for another account
I think the free storage is only small but I pay for extra storage on my own account

 

[anne O'nymous]

Google drive is a shame because I have plenty of storage and would love to use it but Google insists whoever you share the link with MUST be able to see your email address.

If I remember correctly, they also don't permit adult content...

 

[PoiluSansNom]

If I remember correctly, they also don't permit adult content...

I think too... tho, there are rare chance they aknowledge it
Unless someone wanting to troll around reports of course...

 

[redknight00]

GDrive is not for downloads, there is a limit to how many times a file can be downloaded before it locks it down, so any GDrive links dies in 3 minutes.

One can get around it, if you have a Google account and enough space to copy stuff to your own drive, but not a good solution, especially considering how restrict they are nowadays with creating accounts.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I think too... tho, there are rare chance they aknowledge it
Unless someone wanting to troll around reports of course...

I agree with the low risk, but since it's a payed account, the result would have worse consequences than with a free one.

 

[M$hot]

Mega/seeded torrent by a large margin, then it's a toss up between Gofile, Mediafire, Zippy and Workupload with a small preference for Workupload out of those 4. Anonfiles is fine to download a torrent from, but any file over 500kb seems to bottleneck in there. Torrents have the Hit and Run problem and from what I can tell nobody set up a 'Reliable seeder network' like we used to have at uni. That kind of leaves Mega, but anything over 3GB is probably going to hit the bandwidth limit, so I resort to the compressed version.

Worth mentioning, I have like 30 Ublock 'Block element' exceptions for Mega so the page runs quite smooth. Without Ublock my rating for Mega would dip quite a bit, somehow the page is very resource intensive and on a few rare occassions crashed the tab, making me restart a download with a bunch of bandwidth already spent.

But how well any of the hosts performs seems to differ by the day and by the time. Taking the large variance into account though, best speeds are still Mega 99% of the time.

 

[Sphere42]

GDrive is not for downloads, there is a limit to how many times a file can be downloaded before it locks it down, so any GDrive links dies in 3 minutes.

One can get around it, if you have a Google account and enough space to copy stuff to your own drive, but not a good solution, especially considering how restrict they are nowadays with creating accounts.

How does that work for the Patreon artists then when they share the same archive link to all their patrons (and everyone on kemono)?
Going through a few new game threads on here even Completed games only got <100 "likes" since Friday, which by Youtube metrics suggests around 1000 views spread across all download platforms.

Not trying to pick a fight, just genuinely curious because I see it does work for 2D art archives with uptimes of months or years. I guess it depends on bandwidth usage rather than the number of downloads?

And while not sensible for this site looking up the artist/dev on kemono might provide more download options for pirating popular creators. Kemono's own file hosting is too slow for anything larger than 200-300MB though.

 

[redknight00]

How does that work for the Patreon artists then when they share the same archive link to all their patrons (and everyone on kemono)?
Going through a few new game threads on here even Completed games only got <100 "likes" since Friday, which by Youtube metrics suggests around 1000 views spread across all download platforms.

Not trying to pick a fight, just genuinely curious because I see it does work for 2D art archives with uptimes of months or years. I guess it depends on bandwidth usage rather than the number of downloads?

And while not sensible for this site looking up the artist/dev on kemono might provide more download options for pirating popular creators. Kemono's own file hosting is too slow for anything larger than 200-300MB though.

Difference in scale, f95zone links need to be live for tens of thousands of downloads per week.

 

[apocalypsetoday]

So in summary, providing the following should appease most, would you agree?

Torrent - I have 100Mbps upload speeds and my machine is online 24/7 so there should always be at least 1 seed.

Mega - This seems to be a love / hate host but its worth providing for those who do enjoy using it.

Zippy & workupload - the 2 that got a few mentions for being decent.

 

[Carrera]

Mega, absolutely Mega, I get consistently fast download speeds, it works every time and using the browser extension makes it super convenient.

The other hosts almost always give me shit in some way or another. Whether it be extremely slow speeds (Google is more reliable speed wise) or the download gets corrupted. Most of the time it's just stupidly slow. Mega however is always consistent and since I'm always on a vpn if I hit the 5gig limit I literally hit a button to change locations and my DL starts back up.

 

[Meaning Less]

I just don't get why mega wouldn't warn you before you attempt to download that it will be limited.

I bet the ammount of wasted bandwidth generated by people discarding their downloads midway through is massive.

 

[Carrera]

I just don't get why mega wouldn't warn you before you attempt to download that it will be limited.

I bet the ammount of wasted bandwidth generated by people discarding their downloads midway through is massive.

It actually does, but I guess people are just to dense and slow to figure out how to get around it.