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The code that runs Redbox DVD rental machines has been dumped online, and, in the wake of the company’s bankruptcy, a community of tinkerers and reverse engineers are probing the operating system to learn how it works. Naturally, one of the first things people did was make one of the machines run Doom.
As has been detailed in several great articles elsewhere, the end of Redbox has been a clusterfuck, with pharmacies, grocery stores, and other retailers stuck with very large, heavy, abandoned DVD rental kiosks. To many people’s surprise, many of the kiosks remain operational even with the bankruptcy of Redbox’s parent company, which has led some people to “liberate” DVDs from the abandoned kiosks. Reddit is full of posts by people who say they have taken dozens of DVDs from kiosks all over the country.
Free DVDs is one thing. But in recent days, people have realized that they can, in some cases, get free Redbox kiosks. In an August filing, Walgreens told the bankruptcy court that it has 5,400 abandoned kiosks at its stores, and that it is spending $184,000 a month keeping them powered. “Walgreens should not be required to continue to ‘store’ and power Redbox kiosks across the country without any form of payment,” the company wrote. And so tinkerers and reverse engineers have begun asking stores whether they can take the devices off their hands.
There are also posts on Reddit by contractors who are selling them, and I was able to find various Redbox DVD kiosks being advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace. (There are far more listings on Facebook Marketplace from people who have obtained hundreds or thousands of Redbox DVDs and are now selling them.)
“When I heard that they were going bankrupt, I went and got a few discs as a keepsake before I realized that I wasn’t charged for them,” JandaJanda2, a Redditor who put Doom on their Redbox, told 404 Media. “After talking with some people on the subreddit about how they worked, I knew I had to get my hands on one.”
“One day while driving around I noticed that the Redbox at my local CVS had disappeared, I then went to all the CVS locations in my area until I found one that still had it, then I waited,” they added. “The contractors showed up and I was able to make a deal with them to purchase one of the machines.”