Keep in mind that the majority of the torrents are actually scene leaks (never intended for public distribution). The scene is now a well known thing, but years ago it was a very exclusive club.
Scene rules are anachronistic and slow to change. The MP3 scene stuck to -V2 VBR for far too long, for example; the change to -V0 VBR in 2011 came as the sharing of FLACs was already ubiquitous outside the scene, and it wasn't until 2012 that the FLAC scene was established. Even now CUE and LOG files are not required from a CD source, which is insane.