AI misuse prompts decompilation portal decomp.dev to shut its project index
One of the key sites for turning classic games back into source code is stepping back. Its creator says AI has broken the scene’s sense of community.
Symbolic image · Photo: Evan-Amos / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
The website decomp.dev, one of the biggest hubs of the game decompilation scene, is being wound down, VGC reports. The site indexed projects in which fans reverse-engineer classic games into readable source code and tracked their progress. Such projects enable, for example, PC ports with higher frame rates or widescreen support. The main index and the ability to add new projects have already been disabled, while individual project pages and historical data will remain.
The creator, a hobbyist, cites the use of AI as the reason. AI can significantly speed up decompilation, but “bad actors have been abusing this in increasingly troublesome ways”, breaking the community aspect, the statement says. According to VGC, in-progress projects are being forked and “finished” with AI, and AI-generated ports are being falsely labelled as decompilations.
As a public index and leaderboard, decomp.dev is now “causing more harm than good”, the statement reads. As a sole hobbyist, the creator says, they lack the energy or desire to define what makes a “good” decompilation.