Posted Tue Apr 3, 2012 3:33 PM
I’ve been away for a while so just read this post.
I worked for what is now called Microsoft Studios when Neverhood was released. The disc you have there is called a “golden master.” In the classic sense, that means that the disc is considered 100% complete and is ready to be shipped to the duplication facility (at the time, this might have been the Canyon Park facility in Bothell.)
Several copies of the golden master were made, some for setting up the duplicators and some for use as reference discs to check the duplication conformity. My team always got one or two for sanity testing and release signoff. I think an additional batch was typically made for last minute checks by various teams. My team (User Experience) would make sure the disc didn’t do anything that it wasn’t supposed to. For example, with Flight Sim’s first CD based Scenery Expansion Pack, we noticed the 8 character abbreviation for the disc icon was SEXPACK, which violated a certification rule we’d put into place (no naughty words in filenames.) On occasion we also prevented more serious things - like removal of all files on the hard drive’s root directory if a user specified C: as the default folder, then later uninstalled the program. You might be surprised at how many companies didn't do this kind of checking.
For the disc you have to have escaped into the wild it would likely mean that the disc duplicator disposed of their reference discs poorly and they were removed from the facility. I used to hear of these sorts of leaks with Xbox 1 titles before they became 100% digitally beamed to Technicolor or the other disc pressing facilities overseas.
By definition, the game ought to function identically to the version found in stores.
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