反编译追踪站 decomp.dev 关停，AI 致移植与分支泛滥冲击社区

This website is a couple of years old. If you've ever been interested in a decomp project and seen one of those completion % graphs, it was probably a screenshot from this site. As they said in their statement today, they are blocking further submissions and only keeping track of already existing projects. The main index (the previous home page that let you browse all projects) is also gone.

I think it's interesting to read their view on how AI is breaking the hobby and the communities that formed around these projects. I'll post some fragments below, but you can read the full statement here: https://decomp.dev/

It is now clear that, with the right guidance, human input, and code reviews, AI can expedite the decompilation process in a significant way. What is also now clear is that the community aspect of decompilation has been broken. Our projects have always been open source to encourage contributions and to benefit the community as a whole. Bad actors have been abusing this in increasingly troublesome ways:

Forking existing decompilation projects to "finish" them with AI. Every project works differently: some may not want to use AI for legal or ethical reasons, and others may be okay with AI, or use AI themselves, but do not want drive-by contributions from folks who have put no effort into making sure the contributions are good. The bottom line is that these kinds of hostile forks put little to no effort into meaningfully contributing to existing projects, tearing apart our community fabric.

Racing to port games, especially utilizing decompilations that they did not contribute to. Yes, now anyone with an AI subscription can manage to create a port or static recompilation that functions at a basic level. Compared to the decompilation process itself, porting is relatively easy, especially with the established tools written by talented humans. While community members put in the effort to decompile a game, opportunists have frequently raced to release a half-baked, barely-functional port from it.

Conflating decompilation and ports. For years, decompilation communities attempted to establish that decompilation is primarily for research: we love these games and want to understand how they work, and to uncover the mysteries that the original developers left behind. That's not to say that ports aren't fun too; they're just not the sole reason a decompilation exists. Sloptubers and subreddits like /r/decomps have done immense damage here, freely using "decomp" to mean "PC port".

I have long held the opinion that AI is not the issue by itself, and we now know it can help tremendously when used correctly. "Slop" comes in many forms, is hard to define, and even harder to moderate. As a sole hobbyist, I don't have the energy (or desire) to define what makes a "good" decompilation and enforce that consistently across the hundreds of projects on the site.

Another thing AI has fucking killed by a bunch of fucking talentless thoughtless nobodies wanting to flood another zone with shit.

The logical conclusion of a tool that exists to prioritize product and result even if at the increasing expense of the human element. This is going to happen more and more with anything people are passionate about.

yesh, i have seen some reddit post proudly boasting how many submission these decomp project can get

Another thing AI has fucking killed by a bunch of fucking talentless thoughtless nobodies wanting to flood another zone with shit.

Except the decomp scene currently is more active than ever so just because it's killed a single website doesn't mean the whole scene will continue

I wonder how AI bros will turn this news as something positive

Except the decomp scene currently is more active than ever so just because it's killed a single website doesn't mean the whole scene will continue

They don't mean the website (I think), but that AI has killed the community who used to work together to decompile a game. Now it's just a competition to rush to the end product, the incentive has completely changed, cause of AI

I wonder how AI bros will turn this news as something positive

you can just look one post above yours!

being mediocre is rewarded more than being an expert in our immediacy era, and the effects will only be felt in a few years for the sloptimists who champion these ports

Rare example of the "scene" getting the proverbial house in order. My bans across the various emulation threads usually always start with me asking for stuff like this so hopefully it's the exception that proves the rule (I do indeed believe I have messed up that idiom).

you can just look one post above yours!
being mediocre is rewarded more than being an expert in our immediacy era, and the effects will only be felt in a few years for the sloptimists who champion these ports

Lol, i was too slow while typing the message :cathead: