Hi,
Ironically enough, some pirated copies may outlast the originals... Lots of original game disks were on cheap, shoddy, low quality media - sometimes even over-stickered ex-PC disks (like some magazines used to use), whereas the early days of piracy (or "backing up"!) would have been done to decent branded media by large numbers of people.
I also have an original of Beneath A Steel Sky with its 15 disks and huge heavy box (bought as part of a job lot) but have never got round to testing it!
New floppies (HD ones) seem to be of terrible quality too... I still use them now and again (mainly to keep a good selection of boot/driver disks for older PCs and the like) and the cheap "no name" ones are useless and full of errors.
As others have said above though, my own Amiga disks dating from 1988 are nearly all still readable 100% error free! But of course, I have backed these all up into ADFs just in case!
- Ali
