Isn't this technically illegal to reverse engineer and share? It's awesome but I feel like it'll hasten big companies to lobby and make some harsh laws around this type of thing. I'm surprised Claude/Fable allows this? Or do we trick them to do it?

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theturtletalks 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s legal to have a ROM of a game you actually owned and ripped. This is simply allowing the ROM that you actually own to be played on a different console, the web.

In this case, the user is distributing the ROM which is illegal. But the method to make it work on the web is fair use. The legal way to do it would be a website where users “insert” their own rom and the website simply lets you play that ROM on the web.

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ahoy 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

there is no ROM in the linked github repo

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theturtletalks 13 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s fair, I saw a screenshot of God of War running in the browser in the ReadMe so assumed the person put it online.

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rpdillon 8 hours ago | parent [-]

They did not. They went to a fair bit of trouble in this regard. The tool both requires an original ROM and a psp-decryptor tool to extract the encrypted EBOOT.BIN. Neither are included, and there is no guidance on how to source either.

	▲	theturtletalks 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes once I was on desktop and checked it out, they are not distributing the ROM. This seems to be a trend. A person decompiled Halo and put it online[0]. It also requires you to bring the ROM. Exciting times. 0. https://hcemobile.com/

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charcircuit 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe if you pull an Anthropic and shred the original cartridge after dumping it.

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accidc 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also pedantic but: it’s jurisdiction dependent

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apefulsin 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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rvz 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Isn't this technically illegal to reverse engineer and share?

Software engineers are devoid of copyright and trademark laws and want everything to $0 and will become the new starving artists without knowing it.

Don't be surprised to see far more mass layoffs in the games industry.

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dandersch 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I understand where you are coming from, but look at what else copyright protection has brought: studios and publishers are so insecure that they want to lock consumers out of 10+ year old games so that they don't have to compete with (their own) past games.

Maybe putting some pressure on making games that are actually new and different isn't a bad thing.

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rvz 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> I understand where you are coming from...

I don't think you do. But please continue.

> Maybe putting some pressure on making games that are actually new and different isn't a bad thing.

That's not the point. It is what comes afterwards and software engineers cannot have it both ways.

This will make game studios move to world models with the real game being never released, but only simulated and streamed to you.

So let's see what happens.

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ThrowawayR2 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That genie escaped the bottle a couple decades ago when The Pirate Bay went online and game studios and publishers started focusing on MMOs and other live service games that couldn't be torrented to compensate. This is a pittance in comparison and it's for a long dead console platform to boot.

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Pannoniae 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And why do you think people won't be able to rip the streamed games too?

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flohofwoe 13 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a bit harder to reverse engineer a game from a video stream than from a binary+data dump ;) (of course an LLM can come up with a knock-off that roughly has the same theme of what it sees in the video-stream, but that would basically be "Italian Spiderman - the Game".

	▲	Pannoniae 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but the LLM can either 1. recreate the assets from the good old "view it from multiple angles" trick 2. exfil the running game from the servers :P

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vuurmot 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can see this thing crushing the demand for video games & software, and all the supporting second order industries going down with it (Adobe, Atlassian, etc).

People have an idealistic view of the world, "democratizing" the software industry, but people are not going to get fed. And the remaining will move onto other industries, the supply of labor will create a kind of involution you see in China, where labor chase after a smaller supply of money.

A 2 trillion dollar industry destroyed, because we want to run games on the cloud, or something

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thereader12 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think reverse engineering or open source is creating the starving artists.

Also, video game programmers are already starving artists comparatively. To many people want to make video games to exploitation is rife. Only publishers benefit from your rhetoric. At least artists get royalties

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rvz 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> Also, video game programmers are already starving artists comparatively.

So this is making it better for them?

> To many people want to make video games to exploitation is rife. Only publishers benefit from your rhetoric. At least artists get royalties

Now both the publisher and the artist (we can now include game developer) will get $0 and cannot have it both ways.

We can accept mass decompilation of games and existing ones being sold today and offered for free, and also accept significant layoffs and the collapse of an entire industry.

	▲	nullify88 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Have you not seen the mass layoffs from Microsoft and other major publishers? And the toxic work environment they are often associated with? AI has nothing to do with that. I hope we see a resurgence in Indie studios and studios that care about their community and customers and not pulling rug pulls like Ubisoft do. Or the union busting Rockstar did. The industry needs a shake up.