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.
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.