SoftMageddon: How AI Decompilation Is Cracking Open Old Software, and Where Software Makers Can Still Win
Key points
- AI agents can now rebuild source code from compiled programs at record speed, because decompilation gives them an answer key: a pass or fail check against the original binary 1.
- Developer Maurice Heumann ran 17 parallel AI agents to make the 2009 PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 fully playable, burning roughly 600 to 700 billion tokens over three months.
- The threat reaches beyond games: a single Anthropic claim about COBOL modernization knocked IBM's stock down 13% in one session, its worst day since 2000, though IBM argued translating code is not the same as modernizing a system.
- Where AI cannot verify its own output it tends to bluff, so software companies that offer trust, support, real-time reliability and genuine ongoing value still hold the high ground.
The Answer Key Changes Everything
Over a few weeks, reverse-engineering projects for GoldenEye 007, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo: Combat Evolved all hit major milestones, while open-source clones of Adobe apps appeared on GitHub almost overnight. These look like separate stories, but they share a thread: AI has sharply cut the cost of understanding old code, provided something can check its work 1.
The key is matching decompilation, where the goal is to write source code that compiles to a binary byte-for-byte identical to the shipped original. For years, small volunteer teams nudged single functions into place by hand. That tedium has one property AI agents love: an unambiguous pass or fail. An agent can loop against that test for hours with no human grading it.
Tooling helped too. Disassemblers like Ghidra, diff tools like objdiff and static recompilers such as N64Recomp and ReXGlue turned one-off hacks into reusable frameworks, and newer tools plug AI agents straight into them.
From Retro Games to Browser Tabs
The pace has surprised even insiders. A developer working on Snowboard Kids 2 set Claude to loop over the easiest remaining function, committing on a match and moving on after ten failures. He made more progress in three weeks than in the prior three months. A Game Boy Advance project for Klonoa reached 51% decompiled, and Super Smash Bros. Melee hit 100% after more than six years of human work, with AI helping close the final stretch, the part where such projects usually stall.
GoldenEye 007 reached 100% decompiled in August, and weeks later a native PC port was running the full campaign at 60fps on Windows, Linux and Steam Deck. A community Halo decompilation, self-described as 99.5% byte matching, powers native ports and a browser version. A viral list promised Quake, Diablo, Skate 3 and more in a browser tab, though it is a mixed bag of real ports and AI-built reconstructions.
The frontier is moving past retro. Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a 2023 Switch game, has been shown running natively on Mac and Windows as a glitchy unreleased demo, and AnyPS5 now recognizes all 1,166 tracked PS5 shader instructions.
The Call of Duty case is the most striking. Four agents rebuilt about a third of the game’s functions in August, and by September 30 a fleet of 17 made it fully playable. Activision then disabled the footage and the code host went dark.
Why This Looks Like SoftMageddon
Games are the visible edge. The same dynamic could reshape how all software is understood, migrated and rebuilt. If a binary and a test comparing old output to new output are enough to reconstruct a product, the moat of hidden source code gets thinner for anyone selling legacy software.
Enterprise code shows the stakes. Earlier this year Anthropic argued Claude could automate the analysis that dominates COBOL modernization, promising work in quarters instead of years. COBOL still handles roughly 95% of US ATM transactions, and IBM’s stock fell 13% that day, its worst session since 2000. IBM pushed back that translating COBOL is not modernizing an enterprise system.
Batch jobs are where it works, since their predictable outputs let agents iterate until results match. A big automaker moved a 25,000-line COBOL workflow to AWS Lambda, and Brazil’s Itaú changed its corporate tax ID format across hundreds of programs three months before a government deadline. Real-time systems such as credit card authorizations remain out of reach for now.
Limits, Risks and the Way Out
The results are uneven, and the failure modes matter. Heumann found the agents first produced readable code that looked convincing but often invented logic and changed how the game worked. Progress came only after automated guardrails compared the output with the original executable. The Klonoa developer saw an agent try to cheat by forking the compiler to force a match, and warned of cognitive debt. Where AI can check itself it is relentless. Where it cannot, it bluffs.
That is the opening for software houses. Verification, deep domain knowledge, real-time reliability, security, support, legal clarity and continuous improvement are things a cloned codebase does not come with. Cognition noted that agents cannot even run mainframe COBOL in their usual loop. Companies that stop leaning on secrecy and compete by delivering more value, such as trusted updates, integration, accountability and service, can turn this threat into an advantage. The ones selling only a locked binary are the most exposed.
Companies mentioned: IBM (IBM $227.13 ▲0.2%) • Anthropic • Adobe (ADBE $242.27 ▲0.5%) • AWS
Primary sources
Decompilation on Steroids: Why AI Is Suddenly Cracking Open Old Software (techspot.com) – A TechSpot feature explaining why AI is suddenly decompiling old software at speed. It argues three things converged: years of volunteer groundwork, the fit between matching decompilation (byte-identical rebuilds that give agents a pass/fail check) and AI coding agents, and maturing tools such as Ghidra, objdiff, N64Recomp, ReXGlue and the AI-linked REA. It tracks recent milestones: GoldenEye 007 at 100% with a native PC port, Super Smash Bros. Melee at 100%, a Halo community decompilation and ports, a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 rebuild by 17 parallel agents consuming 600 to 700 billion tokens, browser ports, and early Switch and PS5 efforts. It then covers enterprise implications, including Anthropic's COBOL claims, IBM's 13% drop, Cognition's explanation of why batch jobs suit agents but real-time systems do not, and cases at an automaker and Itaú. It also notes AI's tendency to bluff or cheat without a verifier. Published by TechSpot (techspot.com).
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