AI vibe-coding madness and the return of Castlevania: October 14-20 gaming news

Hey readers,

In case you missed out on the PC-only co-op climbing game Peak, worry not—it’s coming to consoles (Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S) on October 22, with full crossplay support.

Meanwhile, the Xbox Store accidentally let it slip that a remaster of the Shrek 2 tie-in game is on the way. That almost seems like a meme headline, but I genuinely liked that game back in the day when I played it on GameCube. It’s a straightforward linear action game with four-player co-op, but they don’t make enough of these anymore. Shrek 2 Remastered is coming out November 10, so GTA 6 better watch out.

And now, some bigger news headlines.

The use of generative AI has permeated pretty much every industry, not least the video games space. But recent developments in the gaming world have drawn attention to the growing role of AI in game development and emulation—and these developments in particular are quite alarming.

If you’re not familiar with the term “vibe coding,” that generally refers to the utilization of large language models to generate code; essentially, you tell an AI model exactly how you want something to work using plain language. The ever-crafty game emulation community is undergoing a reckoning surrounding vibe coding. Hobbyists are already churning out ports of big games like Halo, Minecraft, and Call of Duty: Black Ops (just to name a few) that are fully playable on web browsers. And they run pretty well.

It’s not an easy feat, with or without AI, but to put it simply, folks are decompiling (basically turning a game’s binary machine code back into readable code) and reverse-engineering these games to port them at a shockingly quick rate using AI agents like Claude. Some projects are even mashing up elements from different games, like putting Minecraft inside of Elden Ring.

And it’s not just hobbyists—big companies like Fortnite creator Epic Games are very publicly going all out in support of using AI for game development. Epic Games even boasted that the newest version of its Epic Games Store was built with vibe coding, claiming that the platform is now faster than Steam (which is debatable). A report also claims that Epic has a shooter game starring Marvel and Star Wars characters in the works, and the studio purportedly delayed its release while directing developers to implement an “AI-first” development model.

When it comes to the unauthorized vibe-coded ports of popular games, you can bet that big game companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are cracking down with DMCA/copyright notices.

But Microsoft itself seemingly wants to get in on the craze. As AI decompiles and “impossible” ports blew up in the news, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the formation of a team called Xbox Labs consisting of “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists.” It’s not 100% clear what this group will be up to, but Sharma cited the growing number of decompilations and ports in her announcement, saying that it’s easy to “easy to see the possibilities in making great games easier to access, giving old games new life, and allowing more players to become creators and co-creators.”

It certainly looks like Xbox is keen to explore those concepts and ideas on its own. And one Xbox executive, senior business strategy manager Brandon Stirrup, very loudly took a stand for AI in game development, saying that “hundreds” at Xbox are already using the technology and that “gaming is the only industry where leaders are afraid to talk about AI.”

Stirrup dramatically declared on social media: “Look, if I’m fired tomorrow it will be because I told you the truth that nobody wants you to know. You can make a game with a simple prompt, and yes, you can make custom, tailored games. Everything you want in a game is right there for the taking, for better or worse,” adding that “if you're a game developer refusing to believe that AI has a place in your future, you should not be in the business of being business.” Stirrup has since deleted his Twitter account.

As a result of the growing AI decomp trend, community website decomp.dev has shut down, citing the concerning speed of newer, AI-driven decompilation projects and claiming that “bad actors have been abusing [AI tools] in increasingly troublesome ways,” such as forking existing projects and rushing their completion with AI.

Meanwhile, several independent game creators are pulling demos for their upcoming releases out of fear that others may use AI to replicate and basically steal their games. Clones and ripoffs are already commonplace in marketplaces like Steam, but AI tools could theoretically make that process of shamelessly copying a game much faster and easier.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be spending some time getting mad at Castlevania’s difficulty. Coming up next is a big release week, with Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, Final Fantasy Resonance, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Happy Switch 1 reveal anniversary,
Chris Compendio