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[BibiMaghoo]

Not sure why you would as a collector open sealed games to check them. That seems like an odd thing to do.

 

[nded]

Not sure why you would as a collector open sealed games to check them. That seems like an odd thing to do.

Not all collectors care about resale, and not all factory sealed games are valuable.

 

[ExitPlanetDust]

Another reason to stop buying physical: your security is an illusion.

I've made the argument before, but the necessity of patches makes disc preservation pointless, anyway.

Even if they do succumb to rot, those physical copies will probably far out last their digital counterparts' sever availability. Out of my collection of about 20 physical PS4 games, there are maybe 2 that have been drastically altered since release by patches. Only one of them I would consider unplayable without its day one patch.

 

[Taliban Stan]

This stinks but I kinda take it like losing the original film reels for some movie that available in every other medium and can still be enjoyed and appreciated by all.

In 30 years when most of this stuff is in museums and is never touched, will the disc technically not working really be an issue when the game has been re-released forever or when 3 minutes of digging around online and a 2 minute download are all it takes to be able to experience it in a way nearly identical to the original method? Or when it's museum fodder and locked behind glass, no touching, looking only?

It still functions as cool stuff on a shelf or in a museum display and it's pretty easy, albeit not always legal, to play any of these games whenever you want on a variety of systems.

 

[TGO]

I have discs dating back over 25 years and I never seen this.

 

[-shadow-]

Spoiler

don't hurt me

Spoiler

Love ya though! X3

 

[Gamezone]

That's why they should dump all these games and store them digitally.

Discs will rot but digital data lasts forever.

Please tell me where to find my DLC's for the original Xbox.

 

[Falk]

Please tell me where to find my DLC's for the original Xbox.

dlc was a mistake, industry should have gone with mailing mini-discs with additional content

 

[Nosgotham]

dlc was a mistake, industry should have gone with mailing mini-discs with additional content

All hail halo 2 multiplayer map pack

 

[dan2026]

Please tell me where to find my DLC's for the original Xbox.

I don't see how you point makes any sense.

If you had the original disc you still wouldn't have any DLC.

 

[SUPGUYZ]

Please tell me where to find my DLC's for the original Xbox.

Digiex has a full DLC download list for Original Xbox.

 

[InfiniteCombo]

Either way, I don't buy old games as collector's items. I buy them to actually play them. If some of them stop working in fifteen, twenty, or however many years, I'll have gotten my enjoyment out of them.

This right here cannot possibly be said enough.

*IF* my disc based video games do succumb to this, it will be at a time long after I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them.

 

[Mihos]

I have discs dating back over 25 years and I never seen this.

Me neither, but I have a pretty nice environment for them here.

I am willing to bet my physical collection will still be going strong long after the digital services are gone.

 

[BibiMaghoo]

Not all collectors care about resale, and not all factory sealed games are valuable.

No, but a sealed game is usually more valuable to the collector themselves than an open one, and if it is meant to be kept sealed it wouldn't matter if it was damaged over time.

 

[Sakujou]

some of my early cd-r are dead, but i havent checked for a long time.
i have a computer with a dvd-rw-player, but for the past 3 years i have been using the macbook... so no need for backups on cds or dvds.

this problem is a big issue, but for a long time i thought this only affects self-made-cds/dvds...

please dont let my psx/ps2 games rot away

 

[AdamT]

As someone who has casually collected LaserDiscs for the last decade... welcome? Rot is rampant on that format. I have some early CDs with that issue as well. I figured it was only a matter of time before my older games were starting to break down.

 

[Peltz]

I feel for the Neo Geo AES collectors. Y'all are crazy.

 

[Lil'DigiOp]

People talk shit about emulation but it's the only path to actually truly preserving older games.

 

[s_mirage]

No, but a sealed game is usually more valuable to the collector themselves than an open one, and if it is meant to be kept sealed it wouldn't matter if it was damaged over time.

It depends on the collector. Sealed games are intrinsically valueless to me over opened ones in good condition, for example, so I will open them. I value playing the game itself, the reason it was manufactured, not having it sit on the shelf, unopened, unplayed, a trophy, never fulfilling its purpose. I view collecting sealed games that may have rotted away to be the same as how I don't really understand collectors of very old wines; what's the point of paying ludicrous amounts of money for a bottle that likely contains vinegar that you can never drink? The thing that was prized decomposed long ago, now they just have an empty reminder.

On the topic of disc rot, I've never really encountered it in any games I've owned from new since the 90s. I did once pick up a non-working copy of D for the Playstation that was so rotted I swear that it must have been dunked in something corrosive, but other than that I've only encountered manufacturing defects. Hell, even my floppy disk games have got a pretty good survival record.

EDIT2: Which brings me to question whether some people overhype this threat. "OMG, some of my discs have pinholes in them!" - Yeah, and based on examining my own collection, with both old and new discs, I'll bet that this isn't a sign of rot: it's a sign of dust in the manufacturing process. Most of the dots were probably there since the discs were new. My original copy of Virtua Fighter 3TB for the Dreamcast, for example, has so many holes that it would occasionally be problematic when playing the bonus videos. Those holes were there when I purchased the game at the EU launch back in 99. Many, many, other new discs that I've checked have individual pinholes. They're not rot.

 

[MarkRenton]

I think my discs will be just fine

 

[dracula_x]

Me neither, but I have a pretty nice environment for them here.

I am willing to bet my physical collection will still be going strong long after the digital services are gone.

Same. Never experienced that, and I have a lot of audio CDs from 80s and 90s.

Actually the issue is not widespread, it's still rare case and it only affects some records from 80s and early 90s.

 

[True Fire]

The future of game preservation is piracy. Decentralized, accessible piracy.

I doubt we'll ever see a video game public domain. I'm assuming the corrupt Republican Congress will extend copyright law indefinitely, so we'll never have a legal public archive of classic video games.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Except it unfortunately doesn't.

Well, it depends. Hard drives die and can have bits flipped, but if you keep multiple backups, and at least one of them is a mirrored RAID disk, and you transfer to new media every ten years or so, the chance of anything getting lost is really low.

Of course, this is all moot if your game needs to authenticate with an external server in order to start. DRM-Free PC games ftw.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Disc rot is a lie, as is theft of discs, damage to discs, losing of discs and any other loss of physical media. Only bad things happen to digital games.

 

[mattiewheels]

So game collecting is like passing a bomb, as long as you sell it new&sealed everything is fine. The one collector down the road who opens his sealed copy to actually play it (the absolute madman) might destroy his investment if he spots the disc rot? Sounds fun.

So I guess that those who do finally open a copy they bought will have the right to get their money back from the seller. The further down the line we get, disc rot could get really expensive to collection sellers if people are buying just to play the game.

 

[MulderYuffie]

luckily none of mine have this among the like 2,000+ disc I own.

 

[Koren]

I really, really want to back up my DC, GC and Wii discs :/ I keeps pushing it because there's no easy way to do it (I'd buy a PC reader that can read those, but not second hand at $200+)

I found a solution: An ISO image. Then put the data on a RAID and replace disks as they keep failing.
There should really be a public institution that does this with all digital media.

RAID IS NOT SAFE, and not a backup method. Especially not the common versions at home, but ultimately any one.

I've discussed with a friend that handle a lot of raid arrays, the simultaneous failures of discs in most devices is really, really high.

If you value your data, store it on at least three discs, in different locations (thefts, fire), some of them not plugged, and run crc checks on a regular basis.

If you use the data often, raid is handy, but that's far from safe.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

dlc was a mistake, industry should have gone with mailing mini-discs with additional content

SOCOM II had extra maps that were only available on a disc that came with the PlayStation magazine and needed to be transfered to the PS2 HDD.

 

[DarkestHour]

Most of my Wii U library died becuase of this. I cannot believe how bad it is they didn't last two years.

 

[DarkestHour]

I really, really want to back up my DC, GC and Wii discs :/ I keeps pushing it because there's no easy way to do it (I'd buy a PC reader that can read those, but not second hand at $200+)


RAID IS NOT SAFE, and not a backup method. Especially not the common versions at home, but ultimately any one.

I've discussed with a friend that handle a lot of raid arrays, the simultaneous failures of discs in most devices is really, really high.

If you value your data, store it on at least three discs, in different locations (thefts, fire), some of them not plugged, and run crc checks on a regular basis.

If you use the data often, raid is handy, but that's far from safe.

Yep. I do local disk, external disk, USB stick, and cloud for photos/music as a fourth location. I don't have much data but it is protected.

 

[mattiewheels]

Most of my Wii U library died becuase of this. I cannot believe how bad it is they didn't last two years.

Jesus, something sounds very wrong here. Wonder what caused this so quickly.

Ironically though, Wii U is the only current system that you can backup and run your files natively through homebrew.

 

[DieH@rd]

Sony&Panasonic announced work on Archival Discs that can hold between 300GB and 1TB. They don't have organic material in them, so there will be no quick decay.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=781997


But there was no news about this format for several years...

 

[Ettie]

The m-disc is the answer to this, but nobody is going to produce retail copies on this kind of media.

For preservation though, put code on an m-disc, and then store it in the proper archival environment. Will it still get bit rot if it isn't accessed? I'm not sure.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-1000-year-dvd-is-here/

 

[pete_clarf]

Jesus, something sounds very wrong here. Wonder what caused this so quickly.

Ironically though, Wii U is the only current system that you can backup and run your files natively through homebrew.

Funny to see your avatar in this thread as the only time I've run into disc rot was a CD-R burn of PJ Harvey's Dry.

 

[mattiewheels]

Funny to see your avatar in this thread as the only time I've run into disc rot was a CD-R burn of PJ Harvey's Dry.

I'm trying hard to avoid the obvious joke here about dry rot.

 

[n0razi]

Stuff like this is why I dont see a reason in collecting games and hardware unless you have access to a vacuum vault. Everything will eventually fail including optical media, ink, capacitors, solder, etc...

 

[F0rneus]

Had this happen to PS3 and Wii U games of all things. Started off with a little pinhole. Wrote it off as a problem due to how the top layer/artwork was printed on the disc. Then another. Then another. Now they are covered in little see through pinholes and don't work anymore. I store my PSX and PS2 discs in the same location, and none of them had this happen yet. Just checked my VF5 disc, store in that same place of years and...no hole. No rot. And other yet kaput.

Also lost Saturn discs to disc rot and I store them in a different location altogether.

 

[pestul]

Are there any environmental conditions that contribute to this? I haven't seen a single instance of this and I have many of the first CD-Rom games on PC. I have even a lot of those old ass demo disks from PCGamer from ages ago and none exhibit rot.

 

[ChouGoku]

Once again digital downloads prove to be the superior format

 

[goldenpp72]

I have 6000 games and know of one that has had this, while this is a concern, I imagine most disc will outlive the original owners if taken care of.

 

[Outrun]

My N-Sync disc is like a cockroach. Nuclear Armageddon would not be enough to damage it...

 

[Cleve]

That's why they should dump all these games and store them digitally.

Discs will rot but digital data lasts forever.

Literally everything decays. That said, abundant distributed backups are always a good idea.

Disc rot as a whole is extremely overblown and those suffering from it now is mostly tied to runs of poorly manufactured discs. I don't want to be the "It hasn't happened to me, so it's not an issue" guy that pops in to every thread, it's an issue, just not as common as it's made out to be. I have stuff from Amiga cd32, neo geo cd, pc-engine, and old ass pc cd games from the early 90s, it's all pefect.

Most of my Wii U library died becuase of this. I cannot believe how bad it is they didn't last two years.

There's got to be something else going on environmentally.

 

[Hairsplash]

Are there any precautions that one can take to avoid this problem?

um, Digital games?.

 

[Sliver]

I always knew digital was the way to go. That and not wanting to lug around boxes of shit whenever I move.

 

[mrk8885]

Once again digital downloads prove to be the superior format

Yea totally right. I can't wait for a future where I can't reinstall a game after a hard drive goes bad because servers are turned off by a company that doesn't make game consoles anymore. Sounds great.

 

[potatohead]

This is why digital preservation of old games is so important.

Without rom sets and disc sets of games of old consoles we'd lose significant amounts of gaming history daily.

It's actually essential that stuff is preserved digitally, not just by the IP owners but by third parties.

 

[clarknova156]

Laser Disc Rot has been a subject of interest for decades. It all comes down to the coating that is used. Many discs that suffered from rot come from factories in the US and Europe and the factories were owned by Sony.

If the coating is right then they can last decades but if not even 10 years is a hugely unlikely stretch.

 

[N.Domixis]

Everything will eventually decay, imagine hundreds of years from now the whole world is watching as the last surviving snes cartridge starts to fail. End of an era.

 

[Beartruck]

Another reason to stop buying physical: your security is an illusion.

I've made the argument before, but the necessity of patches makes disc preservation pointless, anyway.



Some Saturn games just won't work on CD-R, including Panzer Dragoon 2: Zwei & Panzer Dragoon Saga.

I burned PDS on cd-r and played halfway through with 0 problem. Maybe it can now?

 

[Iva Demilcol]

Scary.

Time to start considering moving to digital to me. I don't have old systems anymore: I sold everything to buy other stuff, including other consoles. I regret selling all those games I used to enjoy but the threads like this make me think that maybe I made the right decision.