We're already knocking on the door of just clean-room recreating any game or experience in one shot. In such an environment, who really cares about reverse engineering old games?

I mean, from game company perspective, will they really care about their old games getting reverse engineered when their next big title can be clean-room recreated by anyone with the skill to write a sentence? Maybe creating a game similar to the next big release will be something that the AIs refuse to do next? Interesting times.

As an aspiring game developer myself, I guess reducing the accessibility of old games benefits me (but I don't like it)--and hey, if you can't get that old game to run, maybe we can vibe code for a weekend and make a new game that captures the same feeling.