I have had an influx of these game decomps on my Instagram recently and was wondering why so many were appearing out of nowhere. Shortly after that influx, the open-sourcing Adobe Suit thing happened and again its on my feed. Most of these projects use AI to make it easier to decomply these things and understand why it was used but I am a bit worried about the implications. As in, will these decomps actually be stable? Will they be maintained? Will companies start lobbying for AI laws harder now, in a way it benefits them and not us?
I personally stay away from AI due to the many issues AI brings but I am a fan of people fighting big companies but is this the way to do it?
Free all software. Death to DRM.
I feel that its karmic retribution. These companies stole everything then started generating code and through corruption they were able to set the precedent that AI is not copyright infringement. All the companies embraced it with open arms.
Now to see it being used to open up and fosswash these proprietary products and its very funny, I’m waiting for the big companies reaction. I can’t wait for them to clutch their pearls.
From a copyright standpoint, distributing reverse-engineered code made by decompiling existing software is almost certainly illegal. If a person wanted to create an FOSS clone of some software, they would have to follow the ‘clean room’ process, and even that doesn’t save you from violating patents. Adobe and the other victims here have legal grounds to remove these projecs from the internet under dmca. Although AI companies seem to be able to ignore most laws these days.
If someone out there is actually looking for alternatives to corporate slopware, I would urge them to join the FOSS community where we build these things ourselves, rather than succumbing to the vibe sickness.
My opinion? Decompiled software has always existed in a legal gray area, it just hasn’t been worth ruling on because of how challenging it’s been to decompile software. AI seems to have allowed sloppers to get in on the action, and given how many sloppers have zero concept of nuance, they’re being very loud about their efforts. In particular, releasing decompiled paid software seems like the easiest way to get companies on your ass. You’re probably breaking half a dozen established and existing laws, especially since some of these projects are selling their decompilation. I expect the legal system to step in and rule in favor of the companies.
To summarize, just like in every other field, AI sloppers are ruining it for everyone
They can train AI on the entire internet and all it’s copyrighted content, that’s no problem they say. But we train AI on copyrighted code and it’s different? Yeah seems like something they’d cry foul about.
This isn’t about training, is it?
It was never about training.
Decompliation projects are cool when they’re used to extend functionality beyond what could be done in the original game and romhacks. It’s awesome to see Super Mario 64 with uncapped framerate and a modern camera.
But a lot of these projects kinda seem like they’re not adding anything that can’t already be emulated. I suppose just having a decompilation is step one that can enable future enhancements, but it seems like recently there are far more of these being slopped out than there are modders interested in doing anything with them.
The fact that a lot of them are just slop now is kind of the problem.
There was a team decompiling Super Smash Bros Melee. It was slow going and they eventually switched to using AI to do it. You can tell where they switched if you look at the source code they published.
The old sections done by hand contain function names like “HSD_PadGetRawQueueCount()” containing variables like “queue_count” and “interrupt”. The new sections generated by AI contain functions names like “Fighter_Spaghetti_8006AD10()” with variables like “x221F_b3” and “x2224_b2”. This is slightly better than reading the raw assembly, but clearly nobody in the group understands what the new sections control or how they work if they can’t even give the functions and variables proper names.
So what’s the point? Why decompile Assembly nobody can understand if the result is archaic C code nobody can understand?
Yes it is the way to do it. There isn’t another way or it would have been done already.
Yes they have been lobbying hard for ages to get AI regulated so only they can control how it’s used.
Stable? Maintained? Some will, some won’t.
The corporations need to learn they will own nothing and be happy.
Do we know this is decompilation? The Adobe Suite one seems to be more a replication of form and function than a true decompilation of the existing software. The interface is easy to replicate, and then each tool and function within it is being recreated based on what it does. The project themselves claim that is how they’ve done it, and it’s feasible. It also seems to be entirely legal.
Whether it is right or wrong, it really brings into focus how the copyright laws are. They’ve been used to bash individual end users for decades, but now we’re seeing they actually seem to have no effect on the AI companies stealing vast troves of data to train their models. We’re also seeing that the tools can be used to do perfectly legal things that have been done manually for decades in the open source community. You can copyright specific code, but you can’t copyright a specific GUI or broad function.
I’m doubt when companies were jumping on to the AI band wagon that they envisioned that AI could be used to totally undermine all the “value” they’d built in their businesses with proprietary software that was just too difficult to replicate. Now it seems to be so extremely easy to replicate that proprietary software in general may be in serious trouble as a business model.
I’ve played with the storycraft tools; it’s actually mindboggling how functional they are with 10 projects that all are already at alpha software level, and useable for basic tasks. Whether or not these projects actually come to fruition is kinda irrelevant; we’ve been shown it can be done and with surprising ease.
Decompilation tools aren’t new, though AI might lower the bar in various ways.
I don’t think that someone’s likely going to be able to successfully claim in courts that the decompiled work is free of copyright, as it’s a duplicate of the original (has substantial similarity) and directly replaces it; those are elements of infringement. A human can’t just sit down with a book and write a copy of it, word-by-word, and claim that they created the new book. They can read from a book and take influences from it, but not simply line-by-line copy it without infringing, and my expectation is that courts will probably treat an agentic AI doing so the same way as a human.
I think that it’s probably mostly impactful in terms of ability to help analyze and defeat DRM systems, something that is technically-impactful, but not legally-impactful. Some DRM systems may just not be practical any more.
