Comment by Bawoosette

I've worked on private servers for a few games that were shut down, starting long before LLMs were invented. The answer in these cases is that human culture has value to most people. Not only are the gameplay experiences themselves valuable to preserve for new and old players alike, but they also embody periods of time that were in some ways better. As a child, a large amount of my social experiences played out through MMO-type games, which future generations probably won't have, given how worldwide social media controls are effectively requiring people to have an online speech license. Even if such an experience could never legally be rolled out on a large scale again, it's still probably worth holding onto what you can, for smaller communities.

Decomps take the preservation of human culture a step further. In my projects, it has become clear that Windows is no longer a reliable platform, and x86 has a sketchy future, but decompilations can help keep a game alive by moving it somewhere else for the sake of accessibility. They also enable further understanding (whether by AI or people) of the game, along with fixing it and expanding upon it.

Vibing a new experience is valuable, but it's not a substitute for what's already been made.