this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
114 points (100.0% liked)

Games

40199 readers
2653 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Dremor@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Dremor@jlai.lu
modfxomt@lemmy.world
114
Video Game Preservation Through Decompilation (hackaday.com)
submitted 1 week ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to c/games@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"Legal" is a very strong word here.

A better statement would be that there hasn't really been a major court case regarding decompiling source for hobby use and most cases where it is used for profit or piracy are no nos for existing reasons. But for education purposes or to develop and interface, it is a grey area. In large part because said education makes you toxic as hell in industry and said interfaces are usually for things that violate the license agreement and TOS because the software didn't provide an interface for a reason.

And then you run into cases where the act of bypassing protections to get the binaries in the first place put you in further hot water. Sort of like how the (way over simplified) argument that you are legally allowed to have a backup of your video games but the act of making said backup gets REALLY sketchy in a lot of cases.

I would probably phrase it more as "decompiling source code is not illegal. How you use it might be"

Its also always worth remembering that law comes from precedent. And it is rarely in anyone's interest for stuff like this to go to trial. So there will be a few landmark cases that cover VERY specific use cases and a LOT of cases of big lawyers saying "Do you really wanna fuck with us?" and getting a C&D and a settlement.