Disc Rot .. This can't be right... :'(

[SuperDerpBro]

I have known about disc rot for quite some time but never really worried about it. Most of the time i only check if buy a used game. Never new ones. I just hold the disc up to your average 60w ceiling bulb and check. Never found anything to be worried about. I was reading a post on Reddit earlier today about how Wii U games are prone to it. Since i was bored i thought "im gonna check muh gamez"

Fuck me

I checked all of my PS3/4 games (I'm a pleb so i only have 56) using an old iPhone 5's LED flash light. Holding the LED about half an inch from the art side of the disc and spinning it while looking at the data side... Unless what im seeing is something different.. about 98% of my discs have disc rot! Used games. Games bought new and played once. Games bought new, opened but today is the first time even being out of the case. And a few that i just unsealed for this test ... I am kinda shocked. I am super anal about how i handle discs. What im seeing is teeny little shimmery white "specs" about the size of the head of a pin. Some games have a single one. Others have many. They don't look like any of the examples of disc rot i have seen over they years. They seem more "sparkley".. So maybe its just some kind of reflection off the disc art from the way more intense white light of the LED over a household bulb?

Before brushing me off or mocking me about my disaster humidity thread.. two things.

1. Since that thread I've been running a digital thermometer with a humidity read out and its never over 56% in here. Even with my window a few inches open (like always) and its 90% and pouring rain outside. Usually it's under 50%. I was actually kinda shocked. LoL

2. Could you please do a similar test with your phone's LED on a good selection of your PS3/4 discs. I'd like to know what others see.

If this is disc rot i am 100% Going digital only going forward.. F M L

EDIT: Looking around a bit.. Seems this might be pretty common for Bluray games. Its called "label rot" and from what little i've found it may not affect the data of bluray games.

[SuperDerpBro]

Reading on Blu-Ray.com forums some even say you can rub the entire label off a bluray and the disc with still work.. *shrugs* .. Hard to find anything concrete.

Nobody willing to check a bunch of their discs and let me know what they see?

[Jake Armitage]

For what it is worth the term disc rot* originally was coined to describe a problem that was found in early laserdiscs. Laserdiscs are actually two separate discs that are glued together - apparently a lot of the early discs the glues had impurities which degraded the information on the discs - varying in degrees of severity but generally severe enough to make the discs at least unwatchable (if not unplayable). One thing that was certain was that you could not spot a rotted disc by any visual inspection - you had to play both sides of a disc to see if it was occurring.

I think that somehow in the early days of the newer technologies (laserdisc was the first - a few years before cds and well before dvds) the term was co-opted by whomever (who had no clue what disc/laser rot referred to) to describe a host of problems found on the other formats.

Most of the accounts** I have read about seem to be more focused on cdrs and dvdrs - which leads me to suspect that there may be something in that process that is at fault.

*The terms laser rot and disc rot were both used to describe the same problem.
**Perforce these are anecdotal - anecdotal information can be useful but it is fraught with problems inherent in its nature.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I've actually seen disc rot on some earlier PS1 and Dreamcast games a friend owned, and they look like little square chunks, in my experience. And like the previous poster said, it has more to do with flaws in the manufacturing process of those early CD/DVD discs. I'm not aware of any such problem occurring on Blu-Rays, although that doesn't mean it certainly doesn't exist.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I really wouldn't worry about it on Blue Rays. A friend of mine has a kid who has a tendency to play with his PS4 discs like a frisbee, and even took sandpaper to one, and it still ran fine, especially considering that was the side the discs reads from.

[isiolia]

The Blu-ray standard actually requires a scratch-resistant coating, since the discs would be very prone to damage otherwise (data layer is closer to the read surface relative to DVD).

Manufacturing problems would be different, though label printing flaws sound more likely to me.

[marurun]

I have seen and can verify the existence of disc rot. Disc rot happens when the data layer of the disc oxidizes or is otherwise damaged, either discoloring or completely degrading. This can happen as a result of contamination during the pressing phase, improper storage in humid or overly hot or cold environments, or too much exposure to UV light, but it is most common in CDs made during the 1990s and very early 2000s when inadequate gluing processes at some high-volume manufacturing facilities resulted in inadequate sealing of the data layer. I have a Dream Theater CD where the outer track is now unreadable because the data layer is slowly discoloring and contracting. It does look a lot like a kind of rot. And this is a disc that has always been stored in temperature-controlled environments.

[SuperDerpBro]

Thanks for the info people.

I just bought Shadow of the Tomb Raider at BestBuy.. has 3 of these pinholes...

I am still VERY curious to know what others see in their own PS3/4 discs. Can anyone take the time to look at 10 or so of their discs with their phones LED and let me know?

Looking at 360/PS2 today .. wish me luck. ROFL

[Segata]

Heard of it. Never had it. Blu Rays lol nah bro. Your PS4 games are fine.

[Dikdikvandik]

I've actually seen disc rot on some earlier PS1 and Dreamcast games a friend owned, and they look like little square chunks, in my experience. And like the previous poster said, it has more to do with flaws in the manufacturing process of those early CD/DVD discs. I'm not aware of any such problem occurring on Blu-Rays, although that doesn't mean it certainly doesn't exist.

Never saw disc rot on PS1 games ever, Nor dreamcast but I hear it happens with a lot of Capcom games.

I have 2 cases of disc rot on Saturn, Salamander which removed the boss music from Salamander 2 and X-Men VS Street fighter which does nothing to the game play at all.