Unfortunately, this is only going to push Sony/Nintendo/MS more towards cloud gaming. AI enabling these amazing reverse engineering efforts and democratizing access to gaming is amazing, and preventing vendor lock in is always something I'll support. However it's hard not to see them pushing gamers towards needing to play games on cloud only, preventing these kind of things happening.
It'll happen regardless, as of now the public internet infrastructure still isn't fast enough to be comparable to local rendering, cloud gaming needs to deliver >50mbps bandwidth at sub 16ms latency.
This continues to be an absolute no-go for competitive real-time games due to input latency. I honestly think there's a chance that game clients might go the way of the recording industry, and they just might not be worth that much.
As doubtful as I am about the viability of cloud streaming, this IS going to cause a bigger push into live service functionality where maybe you have a light client but the server is authoritative over more and more aspects of the game. Even then, AI can write its own server, so it needs to be full of FOMO if you're not on the official server.
But nobody will play it? Steam exists and all those games get pirated. You can’t force gamers to buy duds. I have a gigabit connection wired and found a cloud version of Control to be totally unplayable.
It is in the realm of design to make games playable within the context of their technological limits.
In this case, I could see games moving towards being turn-based i.e. online chess.
Revenues suffer because game studios and publishers make awful decisions. See the botched releases of Marathon (Bungie) and the more infamous examples — concord and split gate.
I honestly welcome cloud gaming.
Action RPGs might be dead in the water,
But there were many games suffering from data mining, and having their secrets revealed day 1.
Bringing games to cloud gaming could restore the mystery in games
Perhaps, but I doubt it. The immersiveness and suspention of disbelief come partially from the richness and massive bandwidth of the data stream players receive. Streaming degrades it massively. Even with media streaming, e.g. Netflix, there's many folks (including myself) who can't stand the low-ish bitrate they _have_ to supply to customers because of the infrastructure strain / $REASONS. With games it may be even worse. And there's also the latency problem, which is kinda massive for this. Unless of course they invent some kind of protocol where assets are stored and loaded on the console, but the logic of the game is received via a low-bandwidth stream.
Regarding your post: I think the future of RE of server-side bound software will be something like 1. Point your AI robot with eyes and ears to an interface designed for you (the human customer). 2. Make it explore software at massive speeds, map and record every possible behavior, closely construct/approximate the human-computer interaction model. 3. Rewrite it completely in Rust. 4. Profit.
There will be no moat. Popular non-FOSS will be laughed at and rewritten by its users in hours/days. Proletariat will finally own the means of production, and the Stallman dream will finally become real.
in a few years, won't I have an agent that can play the game via the video stream and then code my own local copy of the game? it might have to iterate through story branching, but that's hardly an obstacle
You think people play Dark Souls because it is "hard" and "dark fantasy"
Or do people play it because the gaming community at large plays it, and people want to join in the conversation and have fun with the community?
High quality games were never the point, look at Roblox
The Hollywood equivalent to this is to make only AAA blockbuster titles in order to drive theatrical ticket sales. It is a strategy with diminishing returns - just look at the box office trajectory over the last 25 years.
It's always nice to have local git clone backups/mirrors of these projects because they may eventually be taken down through legal threats eg, Yuzu and Ryujinx.
GTA 6 is releasing on PS5 right?
Who is going to pay a single cent for software if everything can be ripped day 1?
Countries with a huge stake in the software industry are going to get crushed?
Most software and games is available pirated already and has been for decades.
You could get pirate games on the original PlayStation two decades ago. Cracking the most recent PlayStation is not going to change things
I think the replies to my comment are not realistic.
The Goldilocks zone for earning revenue for movies & games were always: Day 1 earnings = Week 1 earnings = Year 1 earnings
The revenue in this case is heavily protected by your IP NOT being copied in a single day, and that people want to experience the product together with their friends.
When people talk about convenience, is there really any inconvenience in downloading a pirated game/movie on release day?
Especially for GTA6. The most amount of money is riding on this. It's still going to be a lot if it's copied on day1, but there is no way it is near their projections.
Do people pay only because there's no pirate alternative? Valve showed this with Steam, people pay for convenience and for good service quality. Piracy is an answer to lack of corporate respect about culture and art that's used to create a commercial product, which manifests in enshitification.
False, myth. This is a common claim pushed by MPAA/RIAA (the copyright police for music and film industry).
Consumers want _access_ to their games/content. For example, netflix made it easy to "rent" or stream content. But as they slowly clawback those features (multi-streaming, password sharing, incorporate ads, increase prices beyond inflation). Then access to content decreases, visibility decreases.
From the amount of activity and how much this all smells like heavy AI usage, I have zero doubt that something will be working shortly after launch. The agents won’t sleep until it boots.
This project is the first hint I’ve seen of the complete destruction of all copy protection schemes. Scary times for any industry that relies on those!
I always wonder who the folks who build these things are. If they become too popular, it seems like a good way to have the government pay you a visit you will not enjoy. But they also seem like technically interesting problems to solve. Glad someone is out there preserving these games in any case.
A lot of people live in places where the government does not really care to use police to enforce copyright, or where this just isn’t really considered illegal.
The PlayStation platform in general is the easiest console to reverse engineer. There’s a lack of security in depth that makes it easy to reverse engineer.
It’s only recently (earlier this year) that the _last gen_ of xbox was cracked.
Since the PS5 is already x86-64, the main friction point here is likely the proprietary graphics API rather than CPU instruction translation. I wonder if they handle GNM command buffers by pre-compiling them into Vulkan during that static relinking phase or if there is still some runtime interception happening when the game tries to queue those draw calls.
As doubtful as I am about the viability of cloud streaming, this IS going to cause a bigger push into live service functionality where maybe you have a light client but the server is authoritative over more and more aspects of the game. Even then, AI can write its own server, so it needs to be full of FOMO if you're not on the official server.
Ugh I know the answer but it’s just sad. I don’t want all media to become cotton candy.
I have only had success with single player games.
Funnily enough I ended a recent blog post on this topic with "You will own nothing and you will be kinda pissed off about it."
https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/reversing.html
Regarding your post: I think the future of RE of server-side bound software will be something like 1. Point your AI robot with eyes and ears to an interface designed for you (the human customer). 2. Make it explore software at massive speeds, map and record every possible behavior, closely construct/approximate the human-computer interaction model. 3. Rewrite it completely in Rust. 4. Profit.
There will be no moat. Popular non-FOSS will be laughed at and rewritten by its users in hours/days. Proletariat will finally own the means of production, and the Stallman dream will finally become real.
High quality games were never the point, look at Roblox
Eg. https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-wipes-out-400-switch-emula...
The Goldilocks zone for earning revenue for movies & games were always: Day 1 earnings = Week 1 earnings = Year 1 earnings
The revenue in this case is heavily protected by your IP NOT being copied in a single day, and that people want to experience the product together with their friends.
When people talk about convenience, is there really any inconvenience in downloading a pirated game/movie on release day?
Consumers want _access_ to their games/content. For example, netflix made it easy to "rent" or stream content. But as they slowly clawback those features (multi-streaming, password sharing, incorporate ads, increase prices beyond inflation). Then access to content decreases, visibility decreases.
This project is the first hint I’ve seen of the complete destruction of all copy protection schemes. Scary times for any industry that relies on those!
It’s only recently (earlier this year) that the _last gen_ of xbox was cracked.