I’d just put in the disambiguation comment that they are extracted ADX files, and no matter where you download or source them yourself, they can be the same. I don’t think we need to misrepresent the ADX files as something authorized by the artist/label when it’s not.
Why mention “extracted ADX files”? The release would refer to the ADX files as they are in the medium. Not a “rip”.
Because most game discs are encrypted and there are no authorized mechanisms to browse their file systems?
My understanding is most “ADX files” are embedded in proprietary archive-type files to begin with, on top of the filesystem of the video game disc itself being proprietary.
ADX files after extraction is not what the MusicBrianz release, as suggested here, is storing. Someone extracting the files is simply how they can look at the musical contents of the medium to add them to MusicBrainz, 1:1.
Just like you can’t “browse” a piano roll, we still add official piano rolls. Similarly, I assume a lot of the formats we add are proprietary.
MusicBrainz releases are supposed to be available, and music (or audiobooks / radio programs / etc. that you can queue up in a playlist on demand).
“Proprietary” formats we add as music releases are usable as music releases. DVDs and Blu-Rays have menus to select songs/videos on demand. Proprietary music and video formats (MiniDisc, UMD, KiT…) either have authorized hardware or software to let you select songs/videos on demand.
There is no authorized software to turn an encrypted video game’s internal multimedia binary data into ADX tracks that you can listen to as desired. If you are saying that an interactive video game should be considered an official release because somebody can hack their video game console to download packages from encrypted filesystems and then use open source tools to further extract the specific binary data from large proprietary package files into individual ADX files… even though there is no way for the general public to turn their game disc into this … then I vehemently disagree this is not a bootleg release.
And realistically, most people are not extracted this internal game audio data from proprietary game archive large files in this way, but downloading the extraction work that somebody else did.
No. Maybe I haven’t been making it clear -
I am saying that by looking at the ADX files we can represent the original and immutable sound files/loops from within a game release, and that game can then be entered as an official release, as we do with games where mp3 files etc are within the file structure. This gives an excellent base for all derivative works/bootlegs, as well.
For this example I don’t see how there is any decision or influence from a “ripper” that would end up with there being multiple ‘bootleg’ releases of this format, or would give it a new release date.
That said if you are disagreeing with the idea of a game format being represented as an official release, even if we can perfectly represent the audio, unless there are directly playable files in the structure, we can agree to disagree. It’s not the end of the world for meif they are marked as bootleg instead of official. But please don’t think of my proposal as representing ADX (etc) rips/extractions, which is not the idea.
In short, imo for a database that is meant to be ‘everything’ music I don’t see what the difference is with storing official release metadata for games with mp3s vs ADX, unless you are looking at it purely from a Picard tagger/file collecting perspective.
It seems like we probably won’t convince each other 
I have made a note on the vgm guideline draft page that it is debated, and to maybe make a forum poll or something, if these guidelines ever start moving again.
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