Many South African gamers have become familiar with the Steam digital game distribution platform, even more so since the advent of uncapped ADSL accounts back in 2010. Due to the growing popularity of Steam, many local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) run their own Steam content mirrors to better serve files to SA’s gamers.

This has advantages for both ISPs and gamers. The ISPs will not have to pay expensive international data transit fees if they can serve large amounts of content from their own servers. Gamers will take pleasure in receiving large game data files over national networks at higher speeds and greater reliability than they may get from international servers, and depending on the policy of their ISP and their ADSL account type, this data may even be free.

Steam is not the only digital retailer though, and among its competitors is GamersGate.

MWEB went live with their own GamersGate content mirror in January 2012, and we caught up with both MWEB and GamersGate to get details on the service.

It is good to note that this mirroring service can be used by any South African internet user, and is not restricted to MWEB subscribers.

Users do not need to do anything special to pull the content locally – any download initiated from GamersGate will be served from MWEB’s mirror site, which is based in their Cape Town data-centre.

The mirror works for both UK- and US-based GamersGate accounts; that’s approximately 3,500 available games.

When asked if there were any advantages to MWEB subscribers in using the service, such as free bandwidth, MWEB’s online gaming manager Desmond Kurz said “In our experience on the MWEB network, the majority of our gamers are on our uncapped product, so ‘free bandwidth’ for these downloads is not really an issue.”

Speaking of the challenges in brokering the mirroring deal with GamersGate, Kurz said: “The only major obstacle in brokering this deal was the size of the South African gaming market. We are still a small market, so we are not as attractive as the US or European markets, but we are growing. We applaud GamersGate for their foresight and vision in agreeing to enter a growing market.”

Gustav Nisser of GamersGate added: “[It’s] GamersGate’s goal to make all PC [Windows] and Mac games as readily and easily accessible as possible to everyone in the world. This is one of the reasons we have the world’s biggest catalogue of games, and one of the main reasons for our partnership with MWEB. As the premier ISP for South Africa, MWEB is the perfect partner to help deliver games to the region digitally and has proved highly valuable in reaching the growing South African market.”

Kurz concluded: “At MWEB we are proud to bring GamersGate to South Africa, providing more choice to the South African game buyer. With over 3,500 titles in the catalogue, GamersGate offers the South African consumer a wide choice of titles, including great older titles that would generally no longer be available in retail stores. Now, with both GamersGate and Steam servers hosted on the MWEB network, we are covering two of the largest gaming content providers.”

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