Harbour Masters, the team of modders and developers behind one of the most popular reverse-engineered retro game PC ports around, the Ocarina of Time port Ship of Harkinian, has been accused by some of using AI-powered tools to create, code, and modify their various ports of classic Nintendo games. While the team confirmed some of its members use AI in various ways, they pushed back on claims that their ports are vibe-coded or AI slop, claiming that every bit of code is looked at by experienced and knowledgeable humans. But some fans weren’t happy with the answers they were hearing, leading to drama and a lot of online yelling.
Online chatter among retro gaming fans and players about the use of AI tools like Claude by Harbour Masters has been floating around for at least a few days now. However, on September 16, the situation quickly accelerated when a post on PC Gaming Wiki claiming to show evidence that thousands of lines of code across multiple ports from the team, including their popular Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time port, were created with the use of some form of AI assistant or tool, went viral across social media. This post was shared on ResetEra, leading to a Bluesky post about that thread going viral over there.
In the PC Gaming Wiki post, a user named “Slopiskillingretrogaming” claimed to have found multiple pieces of evidence showing that Harbour Masters’ ports were filled with AI-generated code and assets.
“Harbour Masters has shifted into using ridiculous amounts of AI-generated code and even some assets recently, and their projects arguably do not meet the requirements of the PC gaming wiki anymore,” posted the user. “Their runtime component called libultraship has been particularly slopped up, but it’s also being used on the individual ports too.”
This user also claimed that the team was trying to “hide” their use of AI by removing co-author credits. In the post, the user linked to many, many different bits of code that they claim show AI tools were used, including some that do indeed directly reference Claude. The PC Gaming Wiki post also claims that recent code changes feature signs of AI tools being used, and allegedly these all come from “lead maintainers of individual ports” and not random coders trying to help or troll. The PC Gaming Wiki post also claims some images the team used were AI-generated, too.
The PC Gaming Wiki post spread quickly among retro gaming fans, and reactions were harsh. People, many of whom have played some of the team’s ports over the years, were upset that Harbour Masters had started using AI tools without properly disclosing it. And some of these angry and frustrated people hopped into the team’s official Discord server to ask questions and yell.
Harbour Masters respond to AI accusations
Reading through the team’s official Discord server, it’s immediately clear that they were overwhelmed and caught off-guard by the PC Gaming Wiki post and the reaction to it. Many members of Harbour Masters pushed back hard against the post, calling it “total lies” and “highly untrue.” One big piece of evidence listed in the viral post claims that millions of lines of code were created using AI. However, developer Malkierian said that wasn’t the case. Instead, a large number of functions were “converted using a script developed with the assistance of AI and tested for parity afterward.”
But this and other answers from different team members made it clear that Harbour Masters does indeed use AI tools as part of its workflow and development process. And it’s clear from the devs’ answers that not only is AI being used to develop their N64 PC ports, but team members have been using it for years now.
“And that’s the other side of the ‘any AI use’ = ‘slop’ coin,” responded developer Briaguya to a fan upset about the team’s use of AI. “People saw Harbour Master projects being built by passionate developers in a non-slop way, and assumed that meant that none of the devs had talked to ChatGPT about a tough problem or used GitHub Copilot during the free trial time period or experimented with agentic coding harnesses as they became available. The quality of the experience didn’t feel like slop.”
That same developer claimed that the team has never checked if any proposed code changes were created using AI tools; instead, they just made sure to ” thoroughly review” every piece of code to ensure it worked and was good enough for the project. “So while I realize it’s not the case, there is a bit of a ‘people suddenly becoming hardasses’ feeling to it all because it just didn’t come up before,” added Briaguya.
That dev and other team members also pointed multiple times to the fact that Harbour Masters has had a publicly available AI policy for months, one which it seems will be expanded upon over time. A key part of that policy is that all code is reviewed, something team member Dana the Elf reiterated numerous times in the group’s Discord: “We don’t just use generated code – our contributors have used LLM conversations to work through a technical problem, or to iterate through something and put their ideas into code that is then verified by human eyes. Nothing is just out of the AI and into the codebase.”
All of the team members at Harbour Masters made it clear they don’t use or condone AI image generation and claimed the project has never used those tools before and won’t use them in the future. As to why the team was allowing AI tools to be used, many argued that this is just the future.
But one dev, Jeod, provided more insight and explained the team’s small size and large workload.
“One of the reasons I think we are accepting of AI contributions is that our developers are spread thin,” said Jeod in the group’s Discord server. “When Ship of Harkinian began, it was apparently a dream; now, with so many ports and a decade later, devs have come and gone; some don’t have interest in specific games, others have real life to deal with. We always welcome talent, and if you’re willing to learn how things work here, then the door is open.”
When a fan asked what version of Ship of Harkinian was free from any AI-assisted code, developer Briguya bluntly said: “I don’t know.”
“I personally haven’t used GitHub Copilot,” said Briguya. “So I definitely wasn’t using it when it launched back in 2021, but that’s before SoH 1.0 was out, so it’s possible Copilot-assisted PRs landed back then without anyone knowing. I did use ChatGPT as a Stack Overflow alternative when working on a few things throughout the years, but I couldn’t give you dates. So maybe like 1.0 and 2.0 are fully LLM-free, but I don’t know for sure.”
For many online, the news that Ship of Harkinian is being built and maintained with AI tools was extremely disappointing. And the confirmation that Harbour Masters is using these tools in many of their ports made Thursday’s release of the team’s newest PC port, Paper Mario, a bit awkward. It is unclear if the port used AI, but it seems likely.
