Team Behind Popular

Key Points:

• Harbour Masters, known for their popular reverse-engineered PC ports of classic Nintendo games like Ocarina of Time, have been accused of extensively using AI tools to create and modify their code and assets, sparking controversy among retro gaming fans.
• A viral PC Gaming Wiki post alleged that thousands of lines of code in Harbour Masters’ projects were AI-generated, citing evidence including references to AI tools like Claude and accusations that the team tried to hide AI involvement by removing co-author credits.
• Harbour Masters acknowledged using AI tools as part of their development workflow for years but emphasized that all AI-assisted code is thoroughly reviewed by experienced human developers to ensure quality and integrity, rejecting claims that their work is low-quality or "slop."
• The team denied using AI-generated images and stated they have a publicly available AI policy that mandates human review of all code contributions, while also explaining their acceptance of AI tools due to a small team and large workload.
• Despite fan backlash and demands for transparency, Harbour Masters could not confirm which versions of their ports are free from AI-assisted code, highlighting the complexity of tracking AI usage over many years of development.