I think this is a bit disingenuous. The stance they’re taking seems consistent to me. I’m
Interpreting their view as “Using AI to create something new isn’t theft, using it to recreate or access an existing product is copyright infringement” - makes sense to me
You can’t have the first one without the second one.
AI doesn’t create something out of thin air, it is only recreating from training data. Which is infringing portion of the argument.
These companies would love to slurp up your game (via AI) but replicating theirs (via AI) is no bueno. Whether you've infringed comes down to whether you can afford the legal fees.
Remains to be seen how it plays out but I always liked Sega's approach to Sonic fan games. They are their own rich genre, which have largely symbiosed with corporate. Though, I suspect most studios won't understand the value of that approach.
It's not even that. The main thing is _publishing_ the decompilation. Doing the decompilation is fine. If I own a game I'm pretty sure I am (or should) be able to legally decompile it or recompile it and turn it into something that runs in a browser or on my phone or whatever. But the source code (not relevant here unless there's a leak) and binary are copyrighted and decompilation doesn't count as a transformative work.
It would be wild to make the argument that decompilation isn't transformative. A classic test is whether the derivative work serves a different purpose than the original. Google thumbnails for example. That seems pretty obviously true for decompilation, since it's the first step in quite a lot of modding, porting, and preservation uses that the original binary doesn't serve.
> If I own a game I'm pretty sure I am (or should) be able to legally decompile it or recompile it
That's a nice theory (and I morally agree with it); not sure the courts would agree; it hasn't been tested. I expect the money would win in this case if we extrapolate from history.
Remember when Microsoft was saying, in 2021-2022, that they were going to provide legal assistance to anybody contesting the license of Copilot-generated code?
You’re saying we should support the billionaire overlords because some indies trying to use new tools will produce results that people parrot on the internet as slop?
Steam is in a weird position as a marketplace. It has to serve mainstream developers, indie but relatively large developers or at least polished games (the kind of thing that would've past steam greenlight fairly quickly back when that was around) and tiny, single indivial indies who may or may not put out something nobody else will (occasionally slop clones) (the kind of thing that've taken a while to pass greenlight). I'm not sure if and how they can create a system that works for everyone. A $1k ceiling is maybe the worst idea. It hurts poor indies but not ai slop studios as much. It's possible that the return of some greenlight-esque curattioj could work, but it'd be devastating if your game got rejected as a false positive for ai slop or anything.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. The stance they’re taking seems consistent to me. I’m Interpreting their view as “Using AI to create something new isn’t theft, using it to recreate or access an existing product is copyright infringement” - makes sense to me
You can’t have the first one without the second one. AI doesn’t create something out of thin air, it is only recreating from training data. Which is infringing portion of the argument.
How, to you, does training an AI violate copyright?
Ok, so lets say you "train" and "AI" using the binary source code of windows, then ask the AI to recreate Windows.
Does that violate copyright? What if we us the binary source code of MacOS, Linux and Windows, then ask it to recreate Windows?
Does the fact that we added some other ingrediants violate the idea that the LLLM will create a substantially similar product?
I'm not defending windows, but indicting LLMs as anything but "fair use".
Rules for thee, not for me.
These companies would love to slurp up your game (via AI) but replicating theirs (via AI) is no bueno. Whether you've infringed comes down to whether you can afford the legal fees.
Remains to be seen how it plays out but I always liked Sega's approach to Sonic fan games. They are their own rich genre, which have largely symbiosed with corporate. Though, I suspect most studios won't understand the value of that approach.
It's not even that. The main thing is _publishing_ the decompilation. Doing the decompilation is fine. If I own a game I'm pretty sure I am (or should) be able to legally decompile it or recompile it and turn it into something that runs in a browser or on my phone or whatever. But the source code (not relevant here unless there's a leak) and binary are copyrighted and decompilation doesn't count as a transformative work.
It would be wild to make the argument that decompilation isn't transformative. A classic test is whether the derivative work serves a different purpose than the original. Google thumbnails for example. That seems pretty obviously true for decompilation, since it's the first step in quite a lot of modding, porting, and preservation uses that the original binary doesn't serve.
> If I own a game I'm pretty sure I am (or should) be able to legally decompile it or recompile it
That's a nice theory (and I morally agree with it); not sure the courts would agree; it hasn't been tested. I expect the money would win in this case if we extrapolate from history.
Remember when Microsoft was saying, in 2021-2022, that they were going to provide legal assistance to anybody contesting the license of Copilot-generated code?
It's going to be really interesting to see how billion dollar game companies handle this.
It could be a Napster/Torrent moment. Which would be a good thing.
I have to begrudgingly support them, because that would decrease the amount of vibe-slop at least somewhat.
That being said, Valve should increase their Steam fee to at least $1k now.
You’re saying we should support the billionaire overlords because some indies trying to use new tools will produce results that people parrot on the internet as slop?
I’ll take the slop.
Steam is in a weird position as a marketplace. It has to serve mainstream developers, indie but relatively large developers or at least polished games (the kind of thing that would've past steam greenlight fairly quickly back when that was around) and tiny, single indivial indies who may or may not put out something nobody else will (occasionally slop clones) (the kind of thing that've taken a while to pass greenlight). I'm not sure if and how they can create a system that works for everyone. A $1k ceiling is maybe the worst idea. It hurts poor indies but not ai slop studios as much. It's possible that the return of some greenlight-esque curattioj could work, but it'd be devastating if your game got rejected as a false positive for ai slop or anything.