This practice also raises significant legal and ethical questions. While emulation itself is legal, distributing compressed ROMs—even heavily modified ones—constitutes copyright infringement. It deprives rightsholders of potential revenue from re-releases (such as the PS2 Classics on PS4/PS5) and undermines legitimate preservation efforts by organizations like the Video Game History Foundation, who argue that maintaining bit-perfect copies is essential to preserving the experience —including the grain of a 2002 MPEG-2 cutscene or the loading-screen CD audio crackle.
Compressed PS2 games offer several benefits, including: Highly Compressed Ps2 Games Under 500mb