Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto.
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Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University.
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Summary
- Activision has issued DMCA notices against a developer's unofficial Black Ops browser ports, taking them offline.
- The ports used original game assets and AI tools, so the publisher taking legal action isn't exactly surprising.
- Expect forks and reuploads to re-emerge; future developers that pick up the projects might require user ROMs or different safeguards.
It really was just a matter of time. Activision has issued a DMCA takedown notice against several vibe-coded classic Call of Duty web browser ports, including Black Ops and Black Ops II, according to the project's developer, Luckey Faraday.
In a Twitter post, Faraday says the publisher targeted him "for porting CoD games to the browser," confirming that all the games are offline. In a follow-up post, Faraday also asks if he's the first "vibe coder" to be hit with a DMCA from a video game publisher (via Tech PowerUp).
Luckey's Call of Duty: Black Ops II port was called Claude of Duty: Vibe Slops II, a port of Black Ops 2's multiplayer map Hijacked with AI enemies, and Kino Der Toten, a port of Black Ops' iconic map and Zombie mode. Like nearly all recently released old-school video game browser ports — which are often based on decompilations — both projects were created with the help of AI coding agents.
Right now, the GitHub repository for Luckey's Black Ops 2 project is still available.
More DMCA notices are likely coming for other browser-based retro game ports
Several ports have launched in the past few weeks
In this case, both titles' project pages said their maps, models, and animations were exported from the original PC games, so it's not surprising that Luckey's projects were quickly hit with a DMCA. While I haven't tried either port myself, based on what I've seen on social media, both titles seem to run pretty smoothly. Given the nature of the internet, I wouldn't be surprised to see the browser ports forked and resurface pretty soon, likely under a different URL and with a different team behind them, especially given the repository is still online.
These Black Ops browser ports are likely the first of several to face DMCA takedowns, as vibe-coded browser ports become increasingly popular. Over the past few weeks, we've seen Halo: Combat Evolved, Super Mario 64, and even Skate 3 get the browser port treatment. Shortly after its release, the developer behind a recent Super Mario 64 browser port started requiring players to upload their own ROM of the game, lto protect it betterect it legally. More recently, a GTA V Switch port also received a DMCA takedown from Take-Two Interactive.