I know I’m rather late to the party, but I just happened to stumble upon this thread while searching for other people also in possession of one of these gold release discs of Freelancer.

I think I can provide at least some additional information about these discs and what they were used for.

I attended a Microsoft game studios press event in Munich one day in late 2002 or early 2003, with Jörg Neumann presenting Freelancer and Rise of Nations to representatives of the german computer and video games press.

After the presentation was over, review copies of Freelancer and preview (beta) copies of Rise of Nations were distributed to the press present. It was exactly this Gold disc I got there and still have today.

So they were not only used internally but also as review copies, at least over here in Germany. I still remember the event, because it was held in a very cool location (a former riding hall from the imperial era) and because of Jörg Neumann, a very cool and charismatic dude.

Edit: I guess you’ll have to right click on the picture attached and open it in a new browser tab in order to see it completely. Sorry!

Cheers from Bavaria,

Stephan