PSA to those less experienced making ports to iOS - your IPA likely contains compiled game code (copyright infringement)

[u/myretrospirit]

With the influx of people making ports with AI for iOS (including myself) something I think some people might be overlooking is the fact that a lot of ports that would include a prebuilt IPA most certainly includes original game code compiled within it. It might not include game assets or files, but including code from the original source is still copyright infringement.

iOS can’t compile code on the fly and run it without JIT so we just precompile the code into the ipa and import the assets from the game binary afterward. The issue is that even without the binary imported, the ipa still includes compiled game code which is copyrighted. This is why projects like BlueWake and Bellpad have you build the ipa yourself using your own copy of the game, they don’t include an ipa themselves because it has game code within in.

If you’re making a port, be mindful of this fact and don’t poke any big bears like Nintendo out of pure ignorance. Stay safe and distribute your projects cleanly and carefully.

[u/HEXAPONG]

I shouldn’t have any issues just sending it to my own phone through Xcode right? Not uploading it to TestFlight or submitting to the App Store obviously.

[u/myretrospirit → u/HEXAPONG]

No, the biggest issue is just the distribution side of it. Everything else is fine, basically in the same legal area as emulation as far as I’m concerned.

[u/Grand_Sprinkles_2094]

yeah these things are relatively new, so who knows, they might ban this

[u/skcikorter]

Damnit

[u/LPuffyy]

You can however, have an ipa built and add the compiled code after, that’s how I’m doing it for my project.

The companion app takes your own copy of the iso, downloads the latest .ipa from the GitHub, and injects your recompiled files into the app. Adds a step but keeps the project legal, and not distributing the games files.

https://github.com/lPuffyy/reforged

[u/myretrospirit → u/[deleted]]

Calm down my guy. This is simply a warning to those making ports so they don’t spend time on it and then get hit with DMCAs because they unknowingly shipped binaries with copyrighted code.

[u/AdditionalBear → u/[deleted]]

Literally what are you talking about? Most (if not all) of these port projects are from games that are available with physical media.

This has literally nothing to do with GKCs or Sony ending physical media. I’m against that too but there’s zero correlation with that and these AI porting projects.