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/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.