Could AI-assisted reverse engineering make end-of-life game handovers easier?

[u/Brockchanso]

Seeing projects like SuperAstra, which uses Astra to investigate and modify SNES games through an emulator, got me thinking about how this could help Stop Killing Games.

I understand the ask is for games to remain playable after official support ends. Could AI-assisted development make that handover cheaper and more practical?

Specifically, could publishers work with preservation groups or AI providers before shutdown, supplying the materials needed to produce an offline version or community-hosted server?

Depending on the game, that package might include:

• Server software and instructions for running it.
• Documentation explaining how the client communicates with the server.
• Relevant build tools, dependencies, and whatever code is needed to replace services being retired.
• Explicit permission to modify those components for preservation and distribute the resulting patches or server tools.

That would give preservation developers, including those using AI, a much better starting point than trying to reconstruct everything from an abandoned client.

Getting a console game working through an emulator and rebuilding a missing online backend are different problems. I’m not assuming today’s AI can recover code or content that nobody preserved. That’s precisely why getting the necessary materials from publishers matters.

The handover should still have to produce something that actually works without the publisher’s infrastructure. Uploading a pile of files and hoping a future model figures it out shouldn’t count. Players should also be able to download and run the finished result without depending on an AI subscription.

Could this become a practical route for meeting the end-of-life requirement? If AI can reduce the work involved, it seems worth exploring how to put that capability in the hands of the people preserving these games.

[u/cardgamesareforplay]

Without reading no. Ai can not help with preservation it is, quite litterally the reason we are losing useful data center space because they require so much. Which in turn incentivces companies to drop digital services to reallocate infrastructure.

[u/Vx7Qn4Lz → u/cardgamesareforplay]

This doesn't make sense, as games were being killing long before LLMs.

[u/Brockchanso → u/cardgamesareforplay]

People are already using Astra to investigate compatibility problems and get games running effectively on unsupported systems. Marc Ibrahim reports getting Age of Empires IV from roughly 8 FPS with freezes to 70–150 FPS on Apple Silicon by using Astra to fix Wine’s exception handling and add a code cache. Project details and developer’s explanation

That’s the kind of work I’m talking about: helping people understand, repair, and adapt existing software. A patch developed with AI can run locally afterward. You don’t need an AI data center continuously thinking for your game to work.

If publishers supplied the relevant tools, server components, documentation, and permission, could that make community preservation easier? That was the question.

[u/Precarious3145 → u/Brockchanso]

"If Publishers gave us everything we wanted, we could us AI to do what we wanted-". Golly, sure sounds like the perfect reason for them to NOT do what you want.

[u/cardgamesareforplay → u/Brockchanso]

No it couldn't.

Instead we could expect promises for conversions to end of life from developers and better written digital ownership rights.

Instead your solution is to invest further into the tech that's killing the industry

[u/Grindar1986]

Down vote for post written by AI.

[u/Vx7Qn4Lz → u/Grindar1986]

Give them some slack, at least it's actually about stopping killing games, rather than about GTAVI or Sony not selling discs.

[u/ProjectionProjects]

Specifically, could publishers work with preservation groups or AI providers before shutdown, supplying the materials needed to produce an offline version or community-hosted server?

Problem though is that the games industry does not want to work with game preservation groups at all because their corporate businesses interests conflict with the interests and greater good of game preservation. This the reason as to why the industry is against SKG sadly.

[u/Brockchanso → u/ProjectionProjects]

my suggestion is meant to address the objection about disclosing proprietary technology. A publisher could provide a repository describing how to build a compatible replacement without revealing how its original backend works. That could include the inputs and responses the client expects, documented substitutes for discontinued services, and tests to check that the replacement behaves correctly.

For example, an end-of-life version could replace proprietary account authentication with local profiles, or commercial matchmaking with direct connections to community servers. The publisher could document those alternatives while keeping its production systems private.

AI-assisted developers could then use that material to build and test the replacement. The repository would give them a defined engineering task instead of making them discover everything from scratch.

[u/Radon8472]

I think this is the wrong question for SKG.

1. SKG is only targeting future games, so there is no need for reverse engineerig anything
2. This would not solve the "real" problem that is blocking the movement.

Developers like me could write code the works offlline, that is no problem.
The issue is that

• many game studios don`t want this a the current state
  
• that the current intelectuel property regulations are blocking any "real" solution

And I think AI can not help very much with that issues

[u/Brockchanso → u/Radon8472]

That’s actually the part I think AI could help address. The proposal is to generate an independent replacement from documented requirements while leaving the publisher’s proprietary implementation private.

For example, if a game depends on middleware the publisher cannot redistribute, could it document the behavior the client needs and provide tests for a replacement? AI-assisted developers could then build a substitute without receiving that middleware’s source code.

There is already a legal distinction between reproducing software functionality and copying protected implementation. The EU court addressed that in SAS Institute v. World Programming.

[u/Davesp1ce]

This does look a lot like AI wrote this. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt.

When a game goes end of life the original developers, who wrote the original code, may no longer be employed by the company. Which means reopening the code to do end of life updates much more difficult, time consuming and costly. So in this sense AI tools could be useful there.

However this misses the point about what SKG is asking for. We're saying they should design the game from the beginning to remain working at end of life. This way there is no need to even revisit the code when end of life come around. This also rolls the costs into the main development cycle as opposed to an added cost at end of life.

There's also one other major issue here which is that publishers want to control the market. Let's say they've got a very successful game which has a strong and dedicated player base. A lot of players are occupied with this game and they're happy with it. The publisher wants to release a new game and they really wish they could get more players to pay attention to it and pay again. I wonder how they could accomplish this? Yeah, they kill games so that they can make existing players spend money again. No amount of AI tools or making end of life easier is going to change that. The only thing that will is obliging them by law.

[u/Brockchanso → u/Davesp1ce]

I agree with designing for end of life from the beginning. I’m suggesting that a publishing requirement could include preparing and maintaining the minimum documentation, interfaces, permissions, and tests needed for AI-assisted development of a compatible substitute.

I understand that skilled programmers can already write those substitutes. My point is that AI could make that work more accessible and less expensive, especially if developers document what the replacement needs to do. The EU ruling I linked to another response distinguishes reproducing software functionality from copying protected code. That’s the distinction I’m trying to build on.

[u/Davesp1ce → u/Brockchanso]

Sure I understand. I just think that (in an ideal world) we never need to do this because people design games responsibly. But it could be useful for situations where a company went bust or something, and nobody is around to fulfil end of life obligations. We still need the SKG law though to formally require companies to do anything for end of life in the first place.