Game Tech News

Developer Eiji Aonuma and franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto are featured in the footage and they have a chat about the core mechanics of the new title as they play it on a big screen, which shows Link moving around the world, riding his long-term companion Epona, and even battling some enemies.

A Sailcloth will be used to allow the main character to glide and the GamePad of the Wii U will get plenty of use in the all-new The Legend of Zelda because it will host the official map that will show how the open world can be explored.

In The Legend of Zelda, gamers will be able to rely on their horse to avoid trees in the forest, which is a nice touch, and they can also spend more time using their weapons or deciding exactly where they want to go.

The Legend of Zelda for the Wii U will be out at some point next year. Miyamoto says that Star Fox will be launched before that, and the two developers have also suggested that the new Majora's Mask remake will be available even sooner, with some improvements designed to make it a better experience on the 3DS handheld.

The Legend of Zelda can deliver a big boost to the Wii U

The new title in the long-running franchise was revealed last year and quickly caused excitement among the player base because it delivers some solid graphics and introduces an entirely open world, which has not been used in the series before.

The Legend of Zelda is one of the projects that can boost sales of the Wii U when it is finally launched, but only if it manages to balance the need to deliver classic elements that appeal to long-term fans while also making good use of the new capabilities of the hardware.

Nintendo has already said that the platform has been performing better in 2014, mainly because of the successful launch of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros.

Still, the device is not catching up to the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 in terms of actual sales.

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Legend of Zelda Wii U Gameplay Demo

The Pirate Bay has been raided by Swedish police and shut down — possibly forever, according to its co-founder Peter Sunde. According to some initial reports coming out of the Sweden, Stockholm police seized computers and equipment belonging to The Pirate Bay, and have detained “at least one man connected to the site.” At this point, it’s unknown if the current operators of The Pirate Bay (TPB) plan to reopen the site — there were reportedly redundant Pirate Bay servers located in other countries, to mitigate against raids like this, but now we’ll see if that redundancy actually exists.

As far as we can tell, today’s raid on TPB is a pretty standard case of copyright law violation. TorrentFreak has a statement from Sweden’s chief intellectual property police officer, Paul Pintér, saying “There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law.” The previous raid on TPB, way back in 2006, was the same deal. Back then, the movie industry — the MPAA — was involved in the raid; it’s fairly safe to assume that commercial interests are behind today’s raid and shutdown, too.

Really, it was only a matter of time until The Pirate Bay was raided again; it’s one of the biggest websites in the world, with tens of millions of users — almost all of which are there to, in most jurisdictions, download stuff illegally. The shift away from hosting torrent files, in favor of magnet links, probably bought the site a little more time — but clearly, given today’s raid, the magnet links weren’t a complete panacea.

This morning, Pirate Bay’s co-founder Peter Sunde had some interesting remarks to make about the shutdown:

“News just reached me that The Pirate Bay has been raided, again. That happened over 8 years ago last time. That time, a lot of people went out to protest and rally in the streets. Today few seem to care. And I’m one of them. Why, you might ask? Well. For multiple reasons. But most of all, I’ve not been a fan of what TPB has become.”

Sunde goes on to talk about how TPB has “become an institution” that people took for granted. He hates the spam of “distasteful” ads that now blanket the site, and the site’s ugly design — but perhaps most tellingly, he is upset by how the site goes “against the ideals that I worked for during my time as part of TPB.”



Basically, The Pirate Bay was meant to be a breath of fresh air. It was meant to be some kind of vehicle for the ideology of the founders and its first users. Sunde even says that the original plan was to close TPB down on its tenth birthday — job done, it would be time to get out of the way and let other smaller, faster, fresher sites take over. Instead, The Pirate Bay has become this lumbering beast — an institution that millions of people idolize, an institution that is essentially a glorified Viagra ad.
Some new Pirate Bay mirrors are already starting to pop up, but they are probably not “official” — rather, they’re most likely just a cloned version of the original site, with many (but probably not all) magnet links still in tact. That isn’t to say that any Pirate Bay clones aren’t useful, but it probably isn’t fair to call them The Pirate Bay; they’re most likely just set up by people who saw an opportunity to raise some fat advertising revenues.

Sunde, for his part, hopes that The Pirate Bay is gone for good — and is hopeful for the future of file sharing. “From the immense void that will now fill up the fiber cables all over the world, I’m pretty sure the next thing will pan out. And hopefully it has no ads for porn or viagra. There’s already other services for that.”


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After an 11-month run at the top of the sales charts, the Xbox One finally outsold the PS4 in November in the US and UK. In the US alone, Xbox One sales totaled an impressive 1.2 million units in November. We don’t have a specific figure for PS4 sales during the same period, but it was probably very close — 1 million units at least, at an educated guess. Is this a sign that a turnaround is on the books — did the library of Xbox One games hit critical mass? — or is it just the predictable result of the deep discounts that Microsoft has been pushing for the last couple of months?

Last month, as you might expect with the orgiastic excesses of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, was a massive month for every console in the US — but according to the third-party market research firm NPD, Microsoft’s Xbox One came out on top. In a separate interview, an Xbox exec confirmed with Gamespot that the Xbox One was indeed the top dog in November. Sadly, neither Sony or NPD has released any data for the PS4 — but hey, after months of Microsoft reticence, I guess it’s time for Sony to be the silent and brooding one.



The giant Xbox One in Vancouver

In case you were wondering, the Wii U also did pretty well in November — we don’t have an exact number of console sales, but NPD is reporting 710,000 sales of Super Smash Bros for the Wii U, which is pretty impressive considering the game was only available for the last week of November. Yes, if you are holding out for some kind of Wii U renaissance based on the long-overdue release of some killer first-party titles, then you might just be in luck. Maybe. The two new Pokemon (Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire) are also doing very well, and driving strong sales of the 3DS.

Anyway, back to the primary battlefront: Xbox One vs. PS4. As you probably know, the PS4 has seen some incredible sales since launch in November 2013, outstripping the Xbox One in every key territory. At last count, exactly a month ago, the PS4 was sitting at around 15 million units sold, versus 10 million for the Xbox One. Clearly, the Xbox One had a very good month in November — but a) that doesn’t mean that the PS4 had a bad month, and b) don’t forget that the Xbox One is currently being sold for $350 or less, versus $400 for the PS4.



It was hard to say no to Xbox One Black Friday bundles like this

It’s also worth pointing out that the US and UK are historically Microsoft/Xbox strongholds — while the PS4 has been winning the eighth-generation console war in both territories, the sales gap hasn’t been as pronounced in the US or UK as the rest of Europe or Asia. It is not massively surprising that, with some Xbox One bundles coming in at $150 less than an equivalent PS4 bundle, Microsoft had a stronger Black Friday and Cyber Monday than Sony.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether Xbox One sales will remain strong through the Christmas shopping season — and, more importantly, whether sales stay strong once the Xbox One returns to full price (the discounted price is meant to be temporary, but something tells me it might stick).


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Remember that neat little cardboard contraption that turns your Android smartphone into a pair of do-it-yourself virtual reality goggles? Well, it seems that Google isn’t content to let that cheeky little idea die. Instead, the folks at Mountain View are doubling down on this adorable low-cost VR solution, and dedicating an entire section of the Play Store to Google Cardboard.

In this little corner of Google’s app store, 24 virtual reality apps are currently available, and most of them are free. Undoubtedly, the most interesting among them is Google’s own app simply dubbed Cardboard. Watch YouTube videos on a virtual big screen, view the entire globe with Google Earth, and take a tour of Versailles all while sitting in your living room in a pair of sweats.



It looks a bit like a… bear… when you flatten Cardboard into icon form

These demos aren’t much more than clever time-wasters, but considering how young modern VR solutions are, a little novelty is nothing to sneeze at. After all, virtual reality still seems like science fiction to most of us, and it’ll take a while for that new-tech-smell to wear off. For now, let’s just enjoy these quirky apps for what they are.

If you want to give these awesome goggles a try, you have two options to choose from. Either download the instructions, and make your very own VR solution from scratch, or simply purchase a pre-made set from a number of third-party manufacturers. Shove in your phone, download the Cardboard app, and you’re ready to rock.

Want to make a VR app of your very own? You can do that too! Simply head over to the Google Cardboard developer site, and download the SDK. If you’re already comfortable making Android apps, then you’re well on your way to making something cool for other cardboard enthusiasts. In fact, if you make something particularly useful or clever, you just might find your app featured alongside other VR hits such as Paul McCartney and The Hobbit VR Experience.

Despite the fact that the big-name headsets like the Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus aren’t even on shelves yet, interest continues to spread well beyond gaming. Everything from tourism pitches to virtual concerts are being developed with these headsets in mind, and that’s only going to grow when the first generation of modern headsets makes its way into the hands of the eager public. But for now, Google Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR will have to suffice.

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A week ago, The Pirate Bay was raided and shut down. At this point, with no resurrection apparently forthcoming, it looks like it might be dead forever. This hasn’t stopped fake sites from popping up — including, rather amusingly, a site called Old Pirate Bay that is being managed by IsoHunt, one of Pirate Bay’s largest rivals. According to data from an anti-piracy firm, which tracks the number of people downloading torrents, there was a small dip in downloads in the two days following the The Pirate Bay’s shutdown, but they’re already back up to the same level as before. Ah, the futility of shutting down file sharing websites.

Last week, TPB was shut down by the Swedish police for copyright-related issues. Almost immediately, new Pirate Bay websites started to pop up. Most of these were simply a clone of The Pirate Bay index of BitTorrent magnet links, without user accounts or any other advanced features. To be clear, there is no official Pirate Bay website at the moment. For that to occur, the current TPB admins would need to set a website up with the existing TPB database of torrents and users/uploader accounts — or they would need to pass the official database to someone else. Neither of these have come to pass yet.

Amusingly enough, though, one of the many new Pirate Bay clones — Old Pirate Bay — has been set up by IsoHunt. It’s essentially just another copy of the Pirate Bay magnet link index, but operated by IsoHunt. The index seems to be fairly recent, though it’s clearly not 100% complete. IsoHunt, incidentally, officially shut down back in October 2013 after a prolonged legal battle — the IsoHunt that exists today is run by someone different (though they seem to be doing a fairly good job of things). Rather than allow for user accounts on Old Pirate Bay, IsoHunt is encouraging all of the old TPB uploaders to register an account on IsoHunt. In short, Old Pirate Bay is just a promotional tool to get more people over to IsoHunt — but still, if you’re looking for torrents that aren’t available elsewhere, Old Pirate Bay might be useful.


According to the anti-piracy company Excipio, the shutdown of the original Pirate Bay only caused the tiniest of ripples in the metaphorical global piracy ocean. On Monday December 8, Excipio tracked 101.5 million IP addresses on BitTorrent trackers worldwide (there’s no word on their methodology, but presumably this excludes private trackers). On December 9, it dropped to 99 million, then 95 million on December 10, and 95.6 million on December 11. By Friday, it was back to 100.2 million, which is in line with the pre-shutdown average. There was a blip, then, while people looked for a Pirate Bay alternative — but it didn’t take them very long to get back into the groove.

Given how large The Pirate Bay was, this might be somewhat surprising — but really, it isn’t. While TPB was the largest torrent site, the same torrents were available from dozens of other large sites. It’s not like TPB had exclusive torrents that weren’t available elsewhere — it was just the largest database of torrents, with the highest amount of traffic. There are some smaller, more esoteric torrents that might’ve vanished with The Pirate Bay, but the lion’s share of popular downloads (films, games, TV shows) are all available through other large torrent sites. Don’t forget that there is a big difference between an index (which just lists torrent files/magnet links), and a tracker, which actually facilitates the sharing of files. There are hundreds of torrent indexes, but only a handful of big trackers — and furthermore, it’s not unusual for a single torrent to use all of the big trackers, for additional redundancy.




Basically, shutting down The Pirate Bay is pointless. I suppose it’s a somewhat symbolic victory against the pirates, but the numbers don’t lie: Unless you shut down a large number of torrent sites, the impact will be minuscule. Somewhat ironically, it might even have made things worse to shut down The Pirate Bay — like the mythological hydra that grows two heads every time a hero chops one off, the shutdown of a large file sharing site usually spawns multiple clones or replacements. Updated: Just as this story went to press, The Pirate Bay made its first official comments following its raid and shutdown last week. In short, the whole TPB team is currently assessing whether they want to relaunch the site, or just call it a day. TorrentFreak has all the details.


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If you’ve played an adventure game in the last 27 years, it has most certainly been influenced by the work of Ron Gilbert. Modern games like Machinarium and Broken Age borrow heavily from the ideas pioneered in Ron Gilbert’s early graphic adventures like Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. Ron has since had a long and successful career spanning numerous different genres, but at long last, he is returning to the realm of point-and-click adventure games with a Kickstarter project dubbed Thimbleweed Park.

I grew up on the classic Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games, and so I was pleased as Punch to see that Ron Gilbert was teaming up with Maniac Mansion co-creator Gary Winnick to make an all-new adventure that looks and plays like a game made back in 1987. I immediately tossed my $20 towards the project, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to know more about the process of making an old-fashioned game with new tools, so I asked Ron for an interview, and here we are. Today, Professor Gilbert is here to drop some science on all of us.



Everything old is new again

Grant Brunner: Are you using a third-party engine, or making the entire game from scratch? What drove that decision?
Ron Gilbert: I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I will probably use my own engine. I have a pretty deep and robust library of code that I’m comfortable using. It’s not an “engine,” but it has most of the building blocks I need.

GB: If you had access to the original SCUMM source code, and Disney gave the thumbs up, would you want to build Thimbleweed Park on the old tech, or would you prefer to start fresh?
RG: SCUMM was a great system, but it’s 25 years old. There has been a lot of evolution in tools and production since then. I think we’ll be able to get something that looks and feels like an old SCUMM game, but still is leveraged on modern development techniques.

GB: In terms of the scope and self-imposed limitations, how close are you attempting to stick to early adventure games from the late 1980s? Specifically, I’m wondering about things like the resolution, the number of colors on screen, RAM usage, and the number of sprites. Do you have a specific spec in mind?
RG: Some of the things you mentioned were also some of the most frustrating limitations we had. We fought RAM constantly and often made creative choices we didn’t want to because we ran out of disk space. Being able to do a classic point & click game, but with what amounts to unlimited RAM will be nice. We’re sticking to a limited palette, but not limiting ourselves to 15 colors. Our goal is to make a game that’s how you remember those old games, not how they actually were. Our brains filled in a lot of details back then.


Maniac Mansion

GB: One of the stretch goals is mobile support. Do you have strong opinions about how a traditional point-and-click adventure game should be ported to touch-based machines?
RG: Touch is natural for point & click games. The mouse was just an extension of our finger pointing, and with touch screens, we can really point. There are some UI issues, like your finger getting in the way, that we’re going to be looking at. Some games have done that well, some have not. It is an issue we want to think about from day one and not just treat the mobile version as a “port.”

GB: Another stretch goal is the addition of optional voice acting — something that wasn’t part of your early work. Since you’re willing to take that step, what about the music? Will it be limited to fit the 1987 concept, or are you looking for a higher fidelity soundtrack?
RG: Music is the one area that we’re going to go “full modern.” There is so much emotion that is conveyed through music and we want to be able to use that. A lot of backers have asked for a true 8-bit soundtrack and if we go enough over our goal, then we’d like to add that as an option. We can’t make any promises, but I’ve talked to the musician about it.


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This year it was 4K — next year, it’s looking like it’ll be 8K and quantum dots. At CES 2015 — now less than a month away! — LG says it will show off a 55-inch 8K TV, and a 4K TV that uses quantum dots to improve image quality and color saturation. In both cases, we are talking about IPS LCD panels, rather than OLED technology, which should mean that both the 4K and 8K displays are reasonably priced. The 8K display is also notable because it’s small — with a diagonal of 55 inches, this thing not only has an incredibly high resolution for a TV (160 PPI), but it will actually fit in most households, unlike the 85- and 98-inch 8K TVs that we’ve seen previously.

Let’s take the quantum dots first. Quantum dots, despite sounding thoroughly futuristic, are actually fairly simple things that are easy to mass-produce. In short, quantum dots are just small specks of semiconducting material that emit light when they’re excited. Depending on the size of the dot, and also the material, you can tune these dots to emit very specific frequencies (colors) of light. In the case of LG, a film of quantum dots is placed in front of the backlight and behind the display, resulting in “picture color reproduction rate and overall brightness [that] are significantly improved.”



Quantum dots, depending on their size, emit light at different frequencies

LG doesn’t say exactly how the quantum dots achieve this, but we do know from previous testing that the overall quality of a display is significantly affected by the quality of the light produced by the backlight (and the various other films and waveguides that sit between the backlight and the display). If the quantum dots help produce a whiter light, or a specific frequency of white that plays very well with LG’s IPS LCD tech, then that could explain why this new 4K monitor has such exceptional color reproduction.

And then there’s that 55-inch 8K TV. With a resolution of 7680×4320, the TV touts around 33.2 million pixels — or 16 times the pixel count of your 1920×1080 TV. While we saw some 8K TVs at CES 2014 from Sharp and Samsung, they were much too large for a normal home (85 inches and 98 inches respectively). 55 inches is definitely on the large side, but I suspect it’s just the right size for enthusiasts who want to enjoy movies or sports (or PC games?) at extremely high resolutions. LG will reportedly start selling an 8K TV sometime this year — meanwhile, despite a year’s head start, Sharp and Samsung don’t yet have an 8K TV on the market. Pricing on LG’s 8K TV is unknown — but its 4K TVs, which went on sale this year, are surprisingly cheap.



A range of large LG TVs

After the industry’s odd foray with 3D, it’s good to see that display and TV makers are back to focusing on image quality, color reproduction, and resolution. We have been in a sad, deep rut for years when it comes to increasing display resolution, but it’s finally starting to improve — first on mobile devices, and now gradually on desktop monitors and TVs. There’s still very little 4K content available, of course, and almost no 8K content — but that’s just how it goes when you’re an early adopter. Plus, when I sat down at my desk this morning and yet again thought about buying a 4K monitor, I’m sure I heard a whisper that said “buy it, and they will come.”


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Steam, one of the sole bastions of sanity when it comes to digital games distribution, has enabled region locking on games. This means if you buy a game in one territory, you can no longer use it in another territory — much like DVD region locking (but more effective, as Steam’s region locking hasn’t been cracked). With no official statement from Valve, there are two possible reasons for the region locks: Unstable currencies, like the Russian ruble, caused by the crashing price of crude oil — or maybe Valve (and publishers) are just sick of people buying games cheaply in other territories, then redeeming them in their (more expensive) home countries.

Steam’s region locks appear to have been applied early this morning, without a public announcement by Valve. One of the developers of Euro Truck Simulator 2, Tomáš Duda, tweeted about a region lock affecting Russia and members of the CIS (Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) — and later, he said that similar blocks were in place for Southeast Asia and South America. As always, there’s also a NeoGAF thread discussing the issue — but be warned that there’s a lot of misplaced vitriol in there. Games that were redeemed before the region lock seem to be unaffected.

In case you weren’t aware, Steam has always provided localized pricing. Mostly this has worked as intended, ensuring gamers don’t get screwed over by big fluctuations in exchange rates, but the system definitely isn’t perfect. It isn’t unusual, for example, for a game to be cheaper in one country — maybe not by much, but for some people a difference of $5 or $10 can be pretty significant. Sometimes publishers do actually price their games lower in some countries, due to lower purchasing power. Because of these price differences (see SteamPrices.com), plus the ability to easily gift Steam games, there is a roaring trade in cross-region game sales. You can either get these cross-region games from other people, or you can do it yourself with a VPN and some other tricks.



Without going too deep into the issue, the general gist of the matter is that, if you were willing to game the system a little, you could save quite a lot of money by buying games from other territories. As you can probably imagine, neither Valve or game publishers are happy about this behavior, but presumably the number of people taking advantage of this “bug” was small enough that it wasn’t worth fixing — until now. The introduction of region locking means that you can no longer buy a game in Russia (or another country where games are currently very cheap) and then add the game to a Steam account in another territory.

While Valve hasn’t officially said anything about the region locks, they are probably due to fluctuating currency exchange rates. A couple of days ago, the value of the Russian ruble plunged about 20% against the US dollar — and presumably this meant that you could pick up games very cheaply on the Russian Steam store (some NeoGAF posters mention prices of under $5 in Russia for a game that would cost $40 in the US, though that isn’t confirmed). The ruble is rallying as I write this story, thanks to pressure from Russia’s central bank, but I doubt the stability will last — a huge amount of the country’s money comes from oil exports, and the price of oil has crashed from about $90 per barrel in October to just under $60 today.



Generally, countries in South America and south-east Asia have shown a weakening against the US dollar, though they don’t seem to have the same volatility as the ruble — so I’m not sure why Valve is enforcing region locks in those territories. In fact, this is probably a strong hint that this isn’t just a temporary thing — maybe the ruble crash is inconsequential, and what we’re actually seeing is a pre-planned, permanent introduction of region locks. I wouldn’t be surprised: While it was certainly nice being able to buy games at cheaper-than-intended prices, that’s a particularly hard position to justify — especially with the deep discounts and regular sales that are commonplace on Steam.

Now, I guess we either wait for an official announcement from Valve, or we check in a few days to see if the region locks are still in place. I get the feeling that they’re not going away, though. You may have to get used to buying Steam games at full price — and game trading forums like SteamGameSwap on Reddit will probably take a huge hit, too.


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If you’re a PS3 or PS4 user, your media streaming needs are finally being met. Earlier this week, Plex announced that native media streaming clients are being released on both the PS3 and PS4, so the existing in-browser and DLNA solutions are no longer the only options. Unfortunately, the app isn’t being released in the US just yet. Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania are the only markets with access for the time being.
In a post on the Plex blog, the long and arduous porting process for the Sony platforms is explained. Unfortunately, the exact reasoning behind the delay in North and South America isn’t made clear. However, we talked to the Plex PR team, and they confirmed that Plex on PS3 and PS4 will be demoed at CES, and will be launching in the US in early 2015. I’m not thrilled about having to wait, but at least now we know that it’s definitely coming. For now, people in over 40 countries can enjoy a native Plex experience on Sony consoles.



Keep in mind, this dedicated client comes at a cost. Currently, only paying Plex Pass members have access. Eventually, the console clients will be made available for purchase separately. Considering that you can only access your media for free in the PS4 browser and through the PS3’s built-in DLNA client, this is a reasonable charge. It clearly took a lot of work to make the native client, and paying for the streamlined experience seems completely fair to me. On top of that, the Plex Pass offers loads of other neat features, so it’s hard to complain.

It’s also worth noting that this app is still in its infancy. Music, photos, and Plex channels aren’t currently supported, but they will be patched in at a later date. Also, only a select few types of movies can be played back natively on the PS4. If you’re using encoding standards other than H.264 and AAC, Plex will need to transcode them on the fly. It’s certainly not the end of the world, but remember that you’ll lose some quality in the process.
If you own an Xbox One or Xbox 360, Plex has been available for months now. Simply download the app, sign up for Plex Pass, do the initial set-up, and you’re ready to rock. Of course, the same can be said for Vizio Smart TVs, iOS, and Android, so this is just one more bullet point for the incredibly flexible service.


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If you’re still lamenting the loss of The Pirate Bay, which was shut down last week by Swedish police, you now have an intriguing new option: If you have some web hosting, a small amount of tech savvy, and you’re located in a country where it’s legal, you can now easily host your own Pirate Bay. Called The Open Bay, it’s as simple as downloading some files*from Github and running a setup wizard. If you so wish, the download also includes the complete database of torrents from The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, and IsoHunt.

The timing of The Open Bay is perfect: Earlier in the week, The Pirate Bay team remarked that they would love to be cloned — that the best case scenario would be lots and lots of Pirate Bays that are impossible to shut down. “It would be amazing if, like in the classic movie Spartacus, everyone could stand up and say ‘I am The Pirate Bay.'” And now, thanks to the folks at IsoHunt, we now have The Open Bay.

As far as I can tell, The Open Bay is a direct copy of The Old Pirate Bay, which IsoHunt launched earlier in the week. To run your own version of The Open Bay, you simply download the source code from Github, grab the database of (8 million!) BitTorrent magnet links, upload all the files to*some web hosting, and then run the installation*wizard.*It isn’t clear if IsoHunt will provide a regularly updated database, or if this is a one-off thing. It goes without saying, of course, that hosting links to torrent files might be illegal in your country.



I had a brief look through the source code, and it looks like this is just a very basic search engine. You can’t create an account, upload new torrents, or comment on torrents. It appears that the original descriptions from Pirate Bay uploads aren’t available, either: The database is just a huge dump of file names and magnet links. There is actually another database file floating around, with all of the original Pirate Bay descriptions, but I won’t link to it here (and anyway, it wouldn’t plug into the Open Bay software; you’d have to do some hacking to make it work, I think).

I’m not entirely convinced that having hundreds of Pirate Bay clones is necessarily a good thing. There are already a lot of torrent sites out there — enough that it would be impossible to shut them all down in one fell swoop. By adding lots of clone sites — clones that don’t allow for comments or uploads, and which probably won’t be updated on a regular basis — it’s possible that high-quality torrents will become harder to find. I think it’s certainly a wise move to keep distributed backups of magnet links, so that new sites can be set up quickly if needed, but I don’t think it’s quite as*simple as everyone standing up and saying “I am the Pirate Bay.”


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