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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17503 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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I don't know about office but the games weren't reverse engineered, they were decompiled, as far as I'm aware anyway.

Presumably the solution will be some sort of run-time encryption, possibly combined with requirements of being online and some parts of programs running off-device?

And as far as I'm aware, decompilation is a kind of reverse engineering. You use Ghidra or some other decompiler and get the assembly code, and then you write something that does the same thing that the original functions did. The best ones might match byte-for-byte when compiled with the same compiler, but otherwise, a good goal is to get each function to output the same things given the same inputs. The guy who reversed Diablo seems to use the terms interchangeably.

lol you're just now hearing about it? 😄 Pretty sure i mentioned it about these gamecube games being decompiled and 100% matched, such a thing could be used for d2 as well, though it's harder to split and match PC binaries

Edited to add: on your solutions point, there is only so much you can do. Even without AI tools, Red Dead Redemption got cracked eventually, despite its DRM protections. You can always set up a server emulator or your own server, which happened with Club Penguin, and probably will happen with World of Warcraft.

Reverse engineering seems like the wrong word when the decompiled code essentially amounts to an extremely detailed instruction manual.

I'm not saying this isn't impressive, it's just that the office and Photoshop things seem much more like reverse engineering. Decompiling is something different.

And as far as I'm aware, decompilation is a kind of reverse engineering.

It's pretty different as used here though -- for one thing "super-decompiler" is pretty neat, but not nearly as impressive as "can code office from scratch"* in terms of broad applicability of the tech.

Decompiled software is also still covered by copyright, so while new forms of piracy are also pretty neat I don't really see much of a business impact here?

*More like "can code an office demo from scratch" AIUI at this point, but still pretty impressive

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