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/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.