THE CRUNCH

Decomp.dev, one of the largest sites indexing video game decompilations, is being 'sunsetted' by its creator @encounter, who says AI has broken the collaborative spirit that made the projects work. Decompilation is the practice of reverse-engineering an existing game into readable code. These projects are technically legal because they use no leaked content or copyrighted assets, and players must supply their own legally sourced ROMs. The payoff is real: decompilations make it possible to improve old games with higher frame rates, widescreen and ultrawide support, dual-stick controls and other fan-made mods.

In a statement on the site's homepage, @encounter says AI used properly and ethically 'can expedite the decompilation process in a significant way', and is not the core problem. Instead, the 'community aspect of decompilation has been broken' by people using it in more questionable ways. 'Our projects have always been open source to encourage contributions and to benefit the community as a whole,' they wrote. 'Bad actors have been abusing this in increasingly troublesome ways.'

The specific abuse @encounter describes is people taking decompilation projects still in progress, forking them and 'finishing' them with AI. The community itself is divided on whether AI belongs in these projects at all: it makes the work much quicker, but some see that as undermining the collaborative effort.