The Pirate Bay Heads For The Clouds
For some years now, there’s been a repeating cycle to The Pirate Bay's operations. Get shut-down, move domain, perhaps change business practices, start up once again. Wash, rinse, repeat. And it largely worked, at least up until the high profile trial in 2006 which culminated in four defendants being found guilty of copyright violations, sentenced to a year in jail, and ordered to pay around $3 million in damages.
Since, it’s tried to put a barrier between itself and a shut-down by the authorities. The latest move is a bold one to say the least: ditch the servers and head for the clouds above.
Blizzard Auctions Off World of Warcraft Servers For Charity
In late 2010, Blizzard Entertainment recorded that it had over 12 million subscribers actively paying for fantasy MMO World of Warcraft. As of the end of September last year, the company reported its subscriber base had slumped to just over 10 million – though, we assure you, that is still a gargantuan number for online gaming.
The drop in players alerted the company that it would have to change tact going forward if it was to compete against free-to-play games of the same ilk; amending its seemingly age-old payment model to free-to-play (at least until level 20 in-game), while performance upgrades and expansions keep the game feeling fresh for existing players. The latter has resulted in Blizzard upgrading the game’s server hardware in order to improve the “gameplay experience” across the board, leaving the company’s much-cherished, ever-dependable older servers out in the cold. Or so you would have thought…