It's worth pointing out that this project has not seen active development for a couple of years, since Take-Two sued the developers:
When re3 went public, OpenRW archived their repository; when re3 was DMCA'd, OpenRW unarchived their repository; and when re3 was sued, OpenRW ceased development.
(This is based on my recollection from observing this two years ago - there may be other factors involved)
OpenMW is a very similar project for a game of the same vintage - Morrowind. Still in active development (last commit 1 hour ago as of writing).
To think Bethesda would be fine with openMW, but rockstar had to shut down openRW.
Bethesda at least had a specific reason for going after OpenMW, though. They’re okay with it now under “certain conditions” that I’m sure the OpenMW devs aren’t going to argue with.
Their main ask was that the OpenMW devs don’t advertise OpenMW as a way to play Morrowind on Android (or other platforms besides PC).
And there’s an understanding that OpenMW’s “intention” isn’t solely to be a way to play Morrowind, but also to implement a generic RPG engine and editor that uses Morrowind’s gameplay and file structure. For someone to make their own game with, not using any of Morrowind’s assets. (I’m not sure if any such game exists, though)
[0]: https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Bethesda_Emails
To be honest, every project of this kind claims that. And in reality, everyone knows 99% of usecases for such engine is to play the original game. Sometimes there are new IPs being created on such engine. For example recently there's been some "boomer shooters" coming out using engines which were made originally to play classic DOOM or Duke Nukem 3D. But such cases are rare.
> Clean-room design is useful as a defense against copyright infringement because it relies on independent creation. However, because independent invention is not a defense against patents, clean-room designs typically cannot be used to circumvent patent restrictions.
You may be able to patent the functionality of a piece of software.
The point of the clean room practice is to avoid a literal line for line copy of the original software. It would be entirely legal to say, write a song from the perspective of Taylor Swift about her feeling sad and betrayed after a breakup.
But analogies are dicey because the law treats functional software differently from literary expression.
Precedent here is vTech reimplementing the Apple II BIOS and Phoenix reimplementing the IBM BIOS and Connectix selling a PlayStation emulator for a fraction of the price of a PlayStation.
A clean room is NEVER a possible defense for patents and it is sometimes a possible defense for copyright.
Copyright infringement requires copying.
Patent infringement does not require copying.
There's a famous case on this exact issue.
Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc. 975 F.2d 832 (Fed. Cir. 1992)
"Nintendo can show copying by proving that Atari made literal copies of the NES program. Alternatively, Nintendo can show copying by proving that Atari had access to the NES program and that Atari's work — the Rabbit program — is substantially similar to Nintendo's work in ideas and the expression of those ideas."
Considering that "Harry Potter" is not an uncommon name in the UK (I've met two) nor is the concept of a wizard school, or riding broomsticks, or house teams, I suspect that AI today might be able to generate something that would get Rowling's attention.
So no it's unlikely to actually be fully clean room project, but written from scratch.
Modding a Bethesda game is literally getting into the innards of the game itself and changing or replacing bits in it as you please, at least until we get into hooking in DLLs which is a whole different story.
There's also "Skyrim, Home of the Nords" which is an effort to re-create pre-Skyrim (the game) lore about Skyrim... in Morrowind.
https://www.pcgamer.com/take-two-dismisses-lawsuit-against-g...
The day reverse-engineering legal protections failed.
These companies know very well these independent groups, even if it's on their legal bounds, can't afford a legal defense team and actively exploit that to abuse them away.
It is protected legal activity to decompile a binary and study the source.
It is protected legal activity to study some source code, describe it, and have someone who never saw the source reimplement the code described.
It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary.
re3 is somewhere between the latter two, and (again aiui from looking into it 2 years ago) they didn't have a clean room step.
It's probably a good thing no one will litigate it. It seems highly likely to be illegal and reasonably do. It would be a bad thing to spend money on.
But it is not straightforwardly illegal (according to Microsoft et al) to decompile source code, train an LLM on it, generate the source code, recompile it, and then distribute the recompiled binary.
One easy 947 quadrillion tensor-operations lifehack
According to what? If the rules are so poorly defined that way then maybe it's not a bad thing to disregard them. Because simply decompiling source code and then recompiling it isn't a simple one-step thing in the way you suggest, not even close.
If you wrote a bash script which decompiled and recompiled the original binary, that would be your property to distribute as you like