I won’t say if that project is legal or not, but expect it (and many others) to be taken down by Nintendo soon. Make a local copy if you want to preserve it.
Decompiling doesn’t give you the code like you’d expect.
It gives you the instructions the code generates.
There’s a Lego island decomp documentary on YouTube that is recomend for more details.
But the actual source code used doesn’t get piped out. Instead you get the machine instructions and you make code that generates the same instructions.
Meaning your still writing the game yourself, meaning you own the copyright
No one says that the actual source code (C or whatever) is “piped out”. The machine instructions (in form of a binary) you have before decompiling is the code that is executed by the machine/emulator is copyrighted like any other data on the disc/cartridge. You are not writing the game yourself if you are decompiling it. And it’s logically a derivative work. The fact that the resulting “instructions” is not the source code that developers wrote is as expected. It won’t create it from thin air.
I don’t understand what kind of mental gymnastics you need to do to think that you are doing something original here.
Fair use means legally using a copyrighted material without requiring permission of the copyright holder. It does not mean you can redistribute in general, though some forms of redistribution are fair use, such as using an excerpt from a book in your essay.
Reverse engineering code is also fair use, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair use to share the code you’ve reversed.
Yeah, that’s why all the IBM clones had to write their BIOS firmware in clean room implementations of new software that implemented the same functionality as IBM’s own documentation described.
Functionality can’t be copyrighted, but code can be. So the easiest way to prove that you made something without the copyrighted code is to mimic the functionality through your own implementation, not by transforming the existing copyrighted code, through decompilation or anything like that.
Some people struggle with the difference between arguing about descriptive statements, about what things are, and arguing about normative statements, about what things should be. And these topics are nuanced.
Decompiling to learn functionality is fair use (because like I said in my previous comment, functionality can’t be copyrighted), but actually using and redistributing code (whether the original source code, the compiled binary derived from the source code, or decompiled code derived from the binary) is pretty risky from a legal standpoint. I’d advise against trying to build a business around the practice.
Yeah but Nintendo doesn’t always seem to give a shit just because something is legal. They’ll still play the “but our legal department has more money than YOU” card
They will eventually be all taken down. That’s the point. They have no legal framework to exist, and Nintendo could strike any time they want, like Rockstar did with the re3 project.
They also have valid reasons to think that these projects are causing them to lose money, since they give alternative (and technically better) solutions to play their old games, without buying any Nintendo hardware or software (unless you dump your games, but let’s be honest. You don’t).
You could say that about Pokemon MMOs too, and yet I’m playing PokeMMO in 2025 on my PokeMMO account I created back in 2013.
There are some things Nintendo don’t go after, and there are other things that they do go after. Decomps don’t appear to be something they go after, which is good because then we can get cool ports of older games too.
Pokemon MMO’s are the entire different thing. I am not 100% sure how they developed them, but they seem to be just reimplementations of original game mechanics, but while reusing original assets.
And yet I don’t understand why you say they are not taken down by Nintendo. Couple of them were already closed down because of copyright infringement, and they made big news about that.
Pokemon MMOs literally use Pokemon assets as well as trademarked data too, and they’re literally using Nintendo’s intellectual property. It’s not too different from decomps.
I say Pokemon MMOs haven’t been taken down, because, I’m playing PokeMMO in 2025 on my PokeMMO account I created back in 2013. PokeMMO has been around for over a decade, Pokemon World Online has been around since like 2007, Pokemon Revolution Online has also been around for a decade, etc.
Do you have any proof of any Pokemon MMOs that have been taken down by Nintendo? I’m looking for Pokemon MMOs that have been shut down and I’m not finding any, I’m just finding Pokemon MMOs that have been around for years without being shut down.
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I won’t say if that project is legal or not, but expect it (and many others) to be taken down by Nintendo soon. Make a local copy if you want to preserve it.
Decomps are legal because no copyrighted material is being distributed. They typically require the original ROM to run (eg for assets).
The code itself is also copyrighted. Decompiled code is a derivative work.
Decompiling doesn’t give you the code like you’d expect.
It gives you the instructions the code generates.
There’s a Lego island decomp documentary on YouTube that is recomend for more details.
But the actual source code used doesn’t get piped out. Instead you get the machine instructions and you make code that generates the same instructions.
Meaning your still writing the game yourself, meaning you own the copyright
No one says that the actual source code (C or whatever) is “piped out”. The machine instructions (in form of a binary) you have before decompiling is the code that is executed by the machine/emulator is copyrighted like any other data on the disc/cartridge. You are not writing the game yourself if you are decompiling it. And it’s logically a derivative work. The fact that the resulting “instructions” is not the source code that developers wrote is as expected. It won’t create it from thin air.
I don’t understand what kind of mental gymnastics you need to do to think that you are doing something original here.
I’m wrong about why,
But it’s been ruled as fair use
That says reverse engineering is ok – not sharing RE’d code.
AFAIK fair use means you can redistribute.
Fair use means legally using a copyrighted material without requiring permission of the copyright holder. It does not mean you can redistribute in general, though some forms of redistribution are fair use, such as using an excerpt from a book in your essay.
Reverse engineering code is also fair use, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair use to share the code you’ve reversed.
Yeah, that’s why all the IBM clones had to write their BIOS firmware in clean room implementations of new software that implemented the same functionality as IBM’s own documentation described.
Functionality can’t be copyrighted, but code can be. So the easiest way to prove that you made something without the copyrighted code is to mimic the functionality through your own implementation, not by transforming the existing copyrighted code, through decompilation or anything like that.
Exactly. But somehow I got downvoted heavily for saying the obvious.
Some people struggle with the difference between arguing about descriptive statements, about what things are, and arguing about normative statements, about what things should be. And these topics are nuanced.
Decompiling to learn functionality is fair use (because like I said in my previous comment, functionality can’t be copyrighted), but actually using and redistributing code (whether the original source code, the compiled binary derived from the source code, or decompiled code derived from the binary) is pretty risky from a legal standpoint. I’d advise against trying to build a business around the practice.
Yeah but Nintendo doesn’t always seem to give a shit just because something is legal. They’ll still play the “but our legal department has more money than YOU” card
Why expect this to be taken down if other decomps haven’t been taken down already? Why expect other decomps to be taken down?
They will eventually be all taken down. That’s the point. They have no legal framework to exist, and Nintendo could strike any time they want, like Rockstar did with the re3 project.
They also have valid reasons to think that these projects are causing them to lose money, since they give alternative (and technically better) solutions to play their old games, without buying any Nintendo hardware or software (unless you dump your games, but let’s be honest. You don’t).
You could say that about Pokemon MMOs too, and yet I’m playing PokeMMO in 2025 on my PokeMMO account I created back in 2013.
There are some things Nintendo don’t go after, and there are other things that they do go after. Decomps don’t appear to be something they go after, which is good because then we can get cool ports of older games too.
Pokemon MMO’s are the entire different thing. I am not 100% sure how they developed them, but they seem to be just reimplementations of original game mechanics, but while reusing original assets.
And yet I don’t understand why you say they are not taken down by Nintendo. Couple of them were already closed down because of copyright infringement, and they made big news about that.
Pokemon MMOs literally use Pokemon assets as well as trademarked data too, and they’re literally using Nintendo’s intellectual property. It’s not too different from decomps.
I say Pokemon MMOs haven’t been taken down, because, I’m playing PokeMMO in 2025 on my PokeMMO account I created back in 2013. PokeMMO has been around for over a decade, Pokemon World Online has been around since like 2007, Pokemon Revolution Online has also been around for a decade, etc.
Do you have any proof of any Pokemon MMOs that have been taken down by Nintendo? I’m looking for Pokemon MMOs that have been shut down and I’m not finding any, I’m just finding Pokemon MMOs that have been around for years without being shut down.