I'm curious why you think shipping MP3 audio in software/games was ever seriously at issue due to patents? Decoding MP3s has always been non-problematic, and en

I'm curious why you think shipping MP3 audio in software/games was ever seriously at issue due to patents? Decoding MP3s has always been non-problematic, and encoding MP3s was only ever problematic for a few years about two decades ago. Some modern games use uncompressed audio because it frees up a few CPU cycles and the min/max balance on hard drives versus CPUs makes that choice desirable if you want to push the minimum spec. range on your game as low as possible (so that more people can play it). Though even then that's only necessary if your main game engine is hitting the CPU pretty hard to start with.