I wrote a blog post on the current trend of game decompilations using AI and where we’re going with this. It’s all very promising but oh boy are the implications scary.
I wrote a blog post on the current trend of game decompilations using AI and where we’re going with this. It’s all very promising but oh boy are the implications scary.
The compiler was never meant to be a source code obfuscating tool anyway, the real sea change is Copyright being ignored. I’ve always wanted Copyright to go away, but it’s going away in a way different than anything I’d imagined and I don’t know what to think about that.
The obvious upside is we can sort of return to a time when every game was openly moddable. 25 years ago almost every hot game was a mod of another game.
Copyright is going away in a way that only benefits AI companies. WE still get burned at the stake for downloading shit from limewire even if we’re training our own AI models.
It’s not like we need to individually train our own AI models, a few groups could do it and release for everybody else. Like Anna’s Archive.
It’s not really copyright that you want to go away. It’s corporations exploiting the work of individuals. There are countries that have much saner, a lot more ethical laws around it.
The AI issue here is their theft, and since the theft is not addressed, it’s going to get ugly, and the big game producers will just lock games behind networks , so unless you’re online and likely paying a subscription, you ain’t gonna be pLaying thaT game.
Decompilation offers you the possibility of cutting out network-required features, if you dream a little bigger.
They’re not talking about individual features, they’re talking about locking the entire game behind a network (such as game streaming) so the game can’t be downloaded to be decompiled in the first place.
It’s been tried before, but the fundamental limitations on networking- not to mention the compute you have to spend in data centers to run it - makes it pretty unlikely to happen, especially as a means of preventing piracy.
Aren’t we assuming the data center buildout is to monopolize compute and turn our home computing into dumb screens?
That’s what I think the hyper scalers are planning, especially after the LLM bubble pops.
I haven’t seen any reason to believe that’s the case.
I appreciate that at least we are all reeling from the implications of it all.
I think that’s a very interesting point about the compiler, companies have really leaned on that as a way to obfuscate code, some folks seem to think compiled is as good as encrypted? Just another lock on the door, I guess, and a free one at that.
I think it does make a ton of sense that an llm would be so capable at decompiling code… it’s basically just translating? But having decompiled some stuff myself years ago, it’s still sort of amazing to see such a tedious process automated.
Bleh, too many conflicting feelings… yes, let’s hope we reclaim some bits of culture taken from us! And let’s cross our fingers that copyright is destroyed in a manner that actually benefits people…
Well, (depending on the language) compilation is a 100% lossy conversion. So when a game gets ‘decompiled’ with an LLM like this, they’re not restoring the original code. It’s just generating new code with the same behavior, which is functionally the same. People doing this generally wasn’t considered infringement, but it’s clear that having a machine automate it is a big problem. Even if we ignore the fact that the output of an LLM is legally tainted/grey area, the scale at which it can happen now means we need new laws to deal with it.
This is basically doing to software what the internet did to piracy. That led to the DMCA, which as shitty and corrupt as it is, at least succeeds at some of its main goals.
Additionally the bigger thing is once AI has the feel for understanding how an engine works, it can pretty easily be applied to another game with the same engine. That’s why nobody here gives a shit about unreal or cryengine games, but rather is reacting to RAGE or Nintendo games. The proprietary studio owned engines are the ones people care about
It’s interesting seeing all the people who used to complain about copyright now realizing that copyright does in fact protect small artists, and it’s actually the reason why anyone was able to make a living as an artist at all.
On the one hand, it’s good that everyone is starting to get on the same page, but it sucks that things always have to get worse before they get better. This is a good opportunity to perform some introspection and think about what kind of mistakes led you to the wrong conclusion on this issue. Maybe it’ll be constructive and helpful for other issues.
Me personally? Copyright is failing your advocated purposes of protecting artists work and their living, and living up to my belief that it was the wrong tool all along. Maybe you could use some of that.
The thing is, just getting rid of it is worse.
The tool is done, the current implementation has been warped to favor corporations. That doesn’t mean throwing out the tool is the answer
I don’t advocate that really, the reply was to the guy who responded to my comment as if he had won an argument we never had, and then went on to ask that I examine all my other life choices because I might be wrong about them too. It was something for him to think about.
What a shame.