How can people extract images of beta versions of video games ?

Question

I constantly hear that people are “Data mining” images from video games and they can see what the game looked like way before release (even extremely early prototype versions). How do they even do that and why are these images still in the game ?

In: Technology

Answer 1

games generally ship with ALL the images the game uses. Thats the 90GB the game takes up. With the right technical knowhow, you can read the image data. Especially if it was made by a major game engine.

Devs sometimes remove old art, but often they just leave it. Its there because it takes a conscious effort to remove, and its just easier to leave it.