Limited Run Games shipped CD-Rs to customers

[Reprise]

Wow. Did anyone see this story break?

As many of you probably know, in recent years LRG has been involved in producing licensed and official reproductions of games for old systems.

Recently though, customers of D, which they released recently for the 3DO, became aware of the fact that the discs they were sent were in fact CD-Rs rather than professionally pressed discs.

LRG's have paused the game's sale and have announced no more 3DO titles will be released until they can resolve the issue.

LRG claim that it wasn't a cost cutting exercise, but that they had stumbled upon issues in producing properly pressed discs that had 100% compatibility on all systems. During their attempts to resolve the issue, they decided that the best course of action was to attempt to use CD-Rs instead, which they tested and found were compatible with their machines. However, despite this, some customers have actually found that they have had issues getting the discs to play.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024 ... s-on-cd-rs

I get this is an isolated incident, but I can't quite understand how or why they thought going down the route of using CD-Rs would be a good idea or why they thought customers wouldn't be disappointed.

[bmoc]

I've been following the situation. While I'm glad they are taking steps to make it right, I'm extremely concerned that they thought this was acceptable even if you believe thier intentions were noble. I'm curious what they plan to do for sealed collectors. I saw no mention of that.

Unless they come out with a statement saying that they won't use CD-Rs in the future, I'm going to be very hesitant to order any reproductions from them.

[Ziggy]

My opinion would be that if they were up front about the discs being CD-Rs, you could have made an informed decision when purchasing it. Maybe some people wouldn't have cared. But yeah, I think the main concern would be the longevity of a CD-R versus a pressed disc. Limited Run seems like a premium collector's product. Getting surprised with a CD-R would have pissed me off, too.

[ZRofel]

I know I've been a huge defender of Limited Run Games in the past, but this is genuinely shocking. Like Ziggy said, Limited Run is ostensibly supposed to be a premium boutique supplier of niche products. You're paying something of a premium to get a high-quality item. I didn't purchase this game from them, but I would have been extremely put off if I had and had received a burned disc in return.

While, like I said, I've been a huge defender of them over the years, I have been concerned with a few recent developments that I've seen (their website has gotten pretty clunky, poor responses from customer service, their order tracking system being a gigantic mess for a while, etc.), and I've been wondering how much their recent (as in, a few years ago) purchase by that shady Embracer Group and its subsequent financial disasters have been impacting them.

[Raging Justice]

I've been following the situation. While I'm glad they are taking steps to make it right, I'm extremely concerned that they thought this was acceptable even if you believe thier intentions were noble. I'm curious what they plan to do for sealed collectors. I saw no mention of that.

I actually hope that sealed collectors learn something from this. I don't do sealed collecting anymore. I want to see what I've paid money for. I've heard stories recently of people receiving Switch games from various places (online stores, limited print companies, Walmart) and finding out there was no cartridge in the case. It's not common, but it DOES happen. A story like this should open people's eyes. A sealed game is a Schrodinger's Cat. What if the game was re-sealed? Plus, you never know if you bought something with manufacturing defects...unless you open it (and yes, that has happened to me). Sometimes you get lucky though, and the manufacturing defect is noticeable without you having to open it. Several people who bought Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth had received a copy with a blue line on the cover art, and the company had to replace their copies. See the following reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NSCollectors/c ... int_error/

Here's a pic someone posted on reddit a few months ago of some games they ordered from Red Art Games. See the empty case?



and a slew of people were posting about the recent Walmart sales a week or two ago and how some of them got empty cases that they had to return.

I don't even see the point of sealed collecting anymore, as the physical gaming market has reached a point now where many high value games lose very little of that value if they are un-sealed. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse on the Switch ain't gonna come cheap regardless of whether or not it's sealed. Older games that have gone up in price sell on ebay for high amounts sealed or not.

[Raging Justice]

A few of these limited print companies have received a lot of criticism lately. Special Reserve Games, First Press Games, Limited Run Games, etc. It's like with physical media getting harder to come by these companies think they can get away with stuff whether it's announcing a limited quantity of a certain game only for it to later get a retail release (Special Reserve Games), or taking pre orders for games that people wait like two years for (First Press Games), or the quality of service declining (LRG sending people games in bubble mailers now instead of boxes)

[opa]

This is both sad and funny at the same time. Turns out anyone with a cd burner could potentially make a better pressing than a professional company. lol

The only Limited Run games I've ever purchased were already made and just overstock through their amazon page. I've never pre-ordered from them due to all the horror stories (plus the wait times seem to be getting worse from what I've seen in comments online).

If they were going to have to resort to burning CD-R's, I would have given refunds at that point. That's a really bad look. "Oh, you paid top dollar for a premium edition? Here's a 5 cent Phillips CD-R from Tony's desk drawer."

[marurun]

So the PC Engine scene occasionally has similar issues, but it looks like they're more pronounced on the 3DO. Essentially, the 3DO uses a non-standard file system on its CDs that is not ISO 9660 compliant. The PC Engine uses a CD format that similar but also different from the ISO 9660 standard and the 3DO file system (based on something called Opera) is much different, to the point that the data is unreadable on PCs without special software to read the data.

Why does this matter? Many CD pressing companies, in order to ensure valid, readable output, require your CD match one of their supported standards. They will take your disc image and validate it against the standard you tell them it's supposed to match and if it doesn't validate they won't press it. Some pressing houses will press discs outside their accepted standards, but it's going to be up to the customer to make sure their image is valid before and after pressing. Basically, the pressing house will press it but outside some very limited quality checks everything is on you.

Since the 3DO file system is not one of the common standards, Limited Run may have had to have either struck a special deal with their standard pressing house or worked with a house that allows those custom file systems, and that means that the pressing house would likely disclaim any issues with disc verification. It might be why LR had to go with CDRs. Maybe their standard pressing house simply didn't support that file system format and won't press anything they can't verify, leaving CDRs as the only option.

That doesn't really tell us what LR needs to do going forward or what specific issues they ran into, and of course it's speculation based on reports from the PC Engine community's issues getting homebrews pressed professionally. But I suspect this applies here, too.

[Nexus-X]

Similar things have happened with Limited Run before and they will happen again. I ran into several orders issues with them a few years ago and I avoid buying from them now, unless it’s something on the shelf at Best Buy or readily available through Amazon. Ironically, their least troublesome products are also their cheapest and most basic. Ordering the basest of the base ass version guarantees the least drama and highest quality product. You’ll still wait longer than you should, but you likely won’t have to deal with any production shenanigans that special editions suffer from.

[Raging Justice]

Yeah, that's another thing I don't get is the obsession with special editions that some people have. You're paying more money for a bunch of junk you'll never use, and a lot of these collector's editions don't even package the extra items well enough to ensure that they maintain good condition. I've had a few collector's editions in the past where you can hear stuff rattling around inside the box.

Base version of a game is all that you need, more money that you can spend on other games.