Been a customer for about 5 hours

[Topdecker]

While I am reluctant to make my introductory post a negative one, I am unhappy and I am going to be direct and say I will never, ever buy another product here until your distribution system is faster.

I will explain.

I just bought DISTANT WORLDS. On the product page, the high speed download time is listed as 16 minutes - I know for the file size that it will be closer to 22-24 minutes.

Well, 5 hours later and I was still downloading. Why? Your distribution people use Amazon's Cloud services. The maximum speed is 50kps with an average of closer to 40kbs. It will NEVER be faster than that because it is designed that way. So printing as a sales point that I could download the game in 16 minutes is completely untruthful - it will take any and everybody over 5 hours to download Distant Worlds.

kilgores.us/Amazon_AWS.jpg

If you were expecting Plimus to provide "High Speed" file transfers for your software, they are pretty fast if you are using a v90 dial-up modem. For anyone on cable or DSL, no, not fast and in fact annoyingly slow.


Top

[Fred98]

Been a customer for many years.
 
On the whole all has gone fine.
 
.

[budd]

I also have been a customer for many years. If it took you that long to download something is defiantly up. Bought many titles here of around that file size and that has not been my experience. 16 minutes sounds right. After downloading many titles my range of download speeds is between 250kps - 450kps. Other people have mentioned this from time to time and i'm not sure what Matrix ever found out about it, but it defiantly isnt the norm. I'm sorry your first experience was negative and i hope Matrix can figure out why it was so slow for you. I know it's very annoying for new customers. It's a holiday weekend, but sooner or later someone from Matrix will post here. Hope you enjoy the game and decide to stick around.

[vonRocko]

Top, this is a fluke. I have dozens of Matrix games, and I never had that kind of problem. It's to bad it happened on your first purchase, but I can assure you, there are many of us who haven't had a single issue.
If I remember correctly, DW took me about 30min. to download.
Good Luck.

[ilovestrategy]

I complain about the installation service more than anyone and yes, it's clunky to the point to where I don't want to buy any more games. But, in spite of that, I haven't had an issue with the actual download speed. I think you hit a fluke.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: vonRocko
I have dozens of Matrix games, and I never had that kind of problem.

Likewise, although Plimus only replaced Digital River fairly recently. It certainly doesn't take anything like 5 hours to download anything on sale here. If everyone had the problem you experienced don't you think there might have been some comment to that effect?

[Toby42]

This is his one and only post [&:]

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Treale
This is his one and only post [&:]

Well, if DW is his first purchase that's hardly a surprise. At least he's no linking to where we can all buy 'wedding gloves'. A true spam classic; I almost miss it.[:D]

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: Hertston

ORIGINAL: Treale
This is his one and only post [&:]

Well, if DW is his first purchase that's hardly a surprise. At least he's no linking to where we can all buy 'wedding gloves'. A true spam classic; I almost miss it.[:D]

soojan

I think careful what you wishing for...... put words like that in post make spammer arrive on time and make wedding glove post to. I buy all my wedding glove from Mr Wilkes at local wedding glove store I like wedding glove it is my friend.

[Topdecker]

I've hung around for a bit so I know that Matrix has some loyal customers and I am trying to discuss this in a way that can have a productive outcome. That several of you have said that you don't experience speed problems is good enough for me to count my problems as being non-typical.

In case it was not clear in my original post, the links that Plimus sent me placed the software on an Amazon CDN (Cloud Developer Network) server. From what I have read, those servers are designed to have a top speed of around 40k, bouncing around between 30k and 50k fairly erratically. My speeds basically matched some speed tests I found posted on the web. The links for this are normally obscured via some java script, but I use a download manager and was able to see where the transfer ultimately resolved from (which is why I included the jpg).

It will probably be something cool, like Plimus running out of monthly bandwidth and splashing downloads over to a secondary mechanism like Amazon's cloud. But, that's just me guessing.

Top

[Topdecker]

I mentioned the sale to a friend and he purchased it and is enjoying 300k download speeds.

[junk2drive]

I've only bought a couple of games since Plimus but have had good speeds.

I was surprised when I could use a Visa gift card to purchase. Another company wanted the name on the card and didn't like "A gift for you".

[Hellfirejet]

Well I have never had a download longer than 20 mins tops,I always buy download plus hardcopy cd boxed.

[parusski]

Topdecker I have been a customer for over 12 years. This is just a fluke. Never give in, never. Thank goodness we are not back in the days when there was NO instant downloading. Just be thankful for that.

[Topdecker]

parusski - It might interest you to know that CROSS OF IRON got a blu-ray treatment in the UK. The last DVD attempt was pretty poor - really disappointing for such a fine film.

Top

[ilovestrategy]

ORIGINAL: Topdecker

parusski - It might interest you to know that CROSS OF IRON got a blu-ray treatment in the UK. The last DVD attempt was pretty poor - really disappointing for such a fine film.

Top

I love that movie! [&o]

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: Topdecker

parusski - It might interest you to know that CROSS OF IRON got a blu-ray treatment in the UK. The last DVD attempt was pretty poor - really disappointing for such a fine film.

Top

NOOOOOOO. I was not consulted about this project, as I should have been. Time to call Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.

[Alan Sharif]

I too buy download, with a hard copy back up, and have never had an issue downloading. Beats waiting for the game to arrive in the post by a country mile.

[PipFromSlitherine]

ORIGINAL: Topdecker

I've hung around for a bit so I know that Matrix has some loyal customers and I am trying to discuss this in a way that can have a productive outcome. That several of you have said that you don't experience speed problems is good enough for me to count my problems as being non-typical.

In case it was not clear in my original post, the links that Plimus sent me placed the software on an Amazon CDN (Cloud Developer Network) server. From what I have read, those servers are designed to have a top speed of around 40k, bouncing around between 30k and 50k fairly erratically. My speeds basically matched some speed tests I found posted on the web. The links for this are normally obscured via some java script, but I use a download manager and was able to see where the transfer ultimately resolved from (which is why I included the jpg).

It will probably be something cool, like Plimus running out of monthly bandwidth and splashing downloads over to a secondary mechanism like Amazon's cloud. But, that's just me guessing.

Top

Sorry your download was so slow. As others have said, that isn't the usual speed [:)]. There is absolutely no 40k/s limit on the cloud downloads - as shown by the many posters in this thread getting much higher download rates.. As I understand it, Plimus use the cloud for all their downloads - Amazon has a hugely scalable and fault tolerant setup which is used by many distribution companies.

In the past when people have had download issues it seems to have been a temporary bottleneck somewhere on the route from cloud to downloader. I couldn't find an appropriate thread to point you to in my quick search I'm afraid. I do know that using a download manager often solves the speed issues, so not sure why it did not for you (were you using multiple streams on the same link?).

Cheers

Pip

[ezzler]

Well my Matrix games have taken hours to download.
So much so I thought this was just normal for Matrix.

I just downloaded overnight. I seem to remember Panzer Corps said 4 hours download and was still clunking away 5 hours after start.
Its certainly happened to me more than once.