this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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Who is behind "unlicensed" game discs? [1:00:54] (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by eleijeep@piefed.social to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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The SD Media Launcher. The Action Replay. The Advance Game Port? How could someone manufacture unlicensed game discs and sell them out in the open? Let's figure that out, and how the companies behind this Media may be on Thin Ice.

This video is an investigation into the companies (mainly Datel and Thin Ice Media) who were making unlicensed third-party devices, peripherals and games for many different consoles in the late 90s and early 2000s, including the Action Replay and other cheat-code and region-unlocking devices. It documents the lengths they had to go to to run code on these consoles as the console manufacturers increased the complexity of their copy-protection schemes with each generation, and it also shows some of the weird and wacky ways that they used this capability to sell additional products and skirt the boundaries of what was legal.

It's both informative and entertaining, and I think it's worth a watch.

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[–] Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

real question should be, why is lmthere licensing for a disc. perhaps that's the problem in that it's just a racket

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

It's even worse today than it was 20-30 years ago. Some of the stuff shown in this video would get sued into oblivion if they tried to release it today.

[–] turdas@suppo.fi 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What do you mean "may be on thin ice"? Pretty sure these discs literally have not been possible to make since the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation.

[–] pory@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

It's wordplay, see the capital letters? The company that pressed discs like Action Replay is called Thin Ice.

F4mi is an excellent video essayist about homebrew, piracy, and tech oddities from the 2000s. Strongly recommend her channel. The vid that put her on the map was tracking down and interviewing the person who created the music for the Wii's Homebrew Channel.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

The answer to your question is about 8m30s into the video. I've added my own description to the post which also answers your question.