decomp.dev shuts down: the decompilation community faces AI-rushed projects

decomp.dev, a site created in 2024 that served as a public index and leaderboard for tracking the progress of game decompilation projects, has announced it is closing with immediate effect. According to Time Extension, which covered it on Friday, October 16, 2026, the site's operators say they designed it to "gamify" decompilation: watching the percentages rise kept contributors motivated.

Their statement explains that AI can meaningfully speed up decompilation when a human oversees the work, but that the community side of the hobby has been damaged. They describe "bad actors" who take other people's open source work, finish it quickly and carelessly, then move on without sharing research, documentation or quality control. The leaderboard has reportedly become a hollow numbers game that now does more harm than good. The text stays fairly neutral on AI tools themselves.

What stays online

The sister sites Decomp.me and ghidra.decomp.dev continue to run. The operators ask that any replacement sites do not reuse the original code. In the comments, many readers criticize mass-produced projects and call for highlighting human-made work, while others point out that some AI-assisted projects, such as the Snowboard Kids decompilations, were done well. The closure illustrates a debate that touches all of preservation: how to keep motivation and quality when automation lowers the barrier to entry.

Source: Time Extension