Game rip
Encyclopedia
A game rip refers to a pirated version of a game that was stripped down in order to fit under scene rules
. This is largely a historical artifact of The Scene since no size limits exist today and releases are generally made in their entirety as disc images.
as the predominant removable storage medium. While CD-ROMs offered vastly increased storage capacity, the growth in network speed was relatively slow in coming. Games of that era, such as Doom, were typically 10–20 MB in size before the adoption of the CD-ROM gave rise to a sudden explosion to 650 MB through the arbitrary inclusion of redbook audio and full-motion video to take advantage of the storage capacity. The most basic rips simply removed Redbook audio and blanked video files, stripping games back down to sizes that were feasible for distribution over 28.8k dialup connections.
With time, and the advent of 3D graphics, actual game content began to take over more of the disc space, as better hardware prompted higher resolution graphics and sound. As network speeds began to increase with 56k dialup and early broadband, the scene responded by revising its rules to allow for larger releases. However, ripping was still more difficult due to ever-increasing sizes of game assets. Towards the end of the game ripping era, releases were often distributed with MP3
audio in order to meet release rules, but after downloading, the files would then have to be backsampled to the raw formats the game actually used (e.g. WAV
).
With the rise of broadband internet across large parts of the world, releases of multiple CD and DVD sized games become a feasible process and the images provided by groups were in fact direct copies of the original CD image, usually with copy protection
bypassing tools supplied either as part of the image or in a separate archive. The proliferation of BitTorrent has aided in distribution of scene releases, though past methods such as Usenet
and transfer over DCC protocols remain common as well.
format used in the system cannot be read using standard PC hardware (CD/DVD drives). Believing this to be an effective lockout, Sega
neglected to disable the drive's ability to read CD-R
s, a feature which is frequently used by developers in the process of testing and debugging new games. With the aid of the "Broadband adapter" accessory, hackers were able to read the contents of GD-ROMs onto a hard disk, and then remaster the files into a CD-R image which could be burned and played with no modification to the Dreamcast itself. However, since the GD-ROM had higher capacity than a CD-R, it was not always possible to achieve a perfect copy in this manner. Thus, several scene groups applied ripping techniques to remove or downsample the game's content so that it would fit on a CD-R.
Standard (warez)
Standards in the warez scene are defined by groups of people who have been involved in its activities for several years and have established connections to large groups. These people form a committee, which creates drafts for approval of the large groups. The first ruleset for the DivX/Xvid scene...
. This is largely a historical artifact of The Scene since no size limits exist today and releases are generally made in their entirety as disc images.
History
Game ripping reached its zenith in the 1990s, during the transition from floppy disks to CD-ROMCD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
as the predominant removable storage medium. While CD-ROMs offered vastly increased storage capacity, the growth in network speed was relatively slow in coming. Games of that era, such as Doom, were typically 10–20 MB in size before the adoption of the CD-ROM gave rise to a sudden explosion to 650 MB through the arbitrary inclusion of redbook audio and full-motion video to take advantage of the storage capacity. The most basic rips simply removed Redbook audio and blanked video files, stripping games back down to sizes that were feasible for distribution over 28.8k dialup connections.
With time, and the advent of 3D graphics, actual game content began to take over more of the disc space, as better hardware prompted higher resolution graphics and sound. As network speeds began to increase with 56k dialup and early broadband, the scene responded by revising its rules to allow for larger releases. However, ripping was still more difficult due to ever-increasing sizes of game assets. Towards the end of the game ripping era, releases were often distributed with MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
audio in order to meet release rules, but after downloading, the files would then have to be backsampled to the raw formats the game actually used (e.g. WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
).
With the rise of broadband internet across large parts of the world, releases of multiple CD and DVD sized games become a feasible process and the images provided by groups were in fact direct copies of the original CD image, usually with copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
bypassing tools supplied either as part of the image or in a separate archive. The proliferation of BitTorrent has aided in distribution of scene releases, though past methods such as Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and transfer over DCC protocols remain common as well.
Dreamcast
The Dreamcast prompted a small revival of game ripping. The proprietary GD-ROMGD-ROM
GD-ROM is the proprietary optical disc format used by the Dreamcast games console, as well as its arcade counterparts and the Sega/Nintendo/Namco Triforce arcade system...
format used in the system cannot be read using standard PC hardware (CD/DVD drives). Believing this to be an effective lockout, Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
neglected to disable the drive's ability to read CD-R
CD-R
A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....
s, a feature which is frequently used by developers in the process of testing and debugging new games. With the aid of the "Broadband adapter" accessory, hackers were able to read the contents of GD-ROMs onto a hard disk, and then remaster the files into a CD-R image which could be burned and played with no modification to the Dreamcast itself. However, since the GD-ROM had higher capacity than a CD-R, it was not always possible to achieve a perfect copy in this manner. Thus, several scene groups applied ripping techniques to remove or downsample the game's content so that it would fit on a CD-R.