PS3 emulator RPCS3's team is asking AI vibe coders to 'stop peddling AI-generated slop’

The development team behind the open-source PS3 emulator, RPCS3, has grown increasingly frustrated with people peddling vibe-coded AI-generated slop. Recently, the RPCS3 GitHub repository has been swarmed by low-effort, AI-generated submissions featuring untested code, largely churned out by large language models and subsequently published by users who don’t fully understand coding. 

The team behind RPCS3 has done everything by hand, and development started long before the prevalence of AI in coding. Initial work on the PS3 emulator began in 2011, and the project has come a long way, allowing gamers to play PS3 exclusives on modern PC hardware, with nearly the entire PlayStation 3 library supported, aside from some exclusions. However, vibe coders submitting AI-generated pull requests have tested the team’s patience.

In a straightforward message, the RPCS3 team took to X and said, “Please stop submitting AI slop code pull requests to RPCS3. We will start banning those who do so without disclosing it. There are plenty of resources online to learn how to debug and code instead of generating slop that you don’t understand, and that doesn’t work.”

The team quickly put together a new set of rules for contributing to the RPCS3 project and announced:

“We have unfortunately seen a rise in untested and unverified AI-generated slop being submitted to this project. This wastes maintainer time and, in worse cases, such changes get merged and break functionality for all users. You can’t possibly handwrite the type of sh*t AI slop we have been seeing. As for all the AI bros seething on our socials, we’re simply blocking you. Learn how to debug and code, and leave behind something useful to humanity when you’re gone instead of peddling slop.”

Despite this, the updated guidelines make it clear that using AI for research or reverse-engineering isn’t out of the question. However, anyone submitting code must understand the ins and outs of every line and take full ownership of it, while typing out all communication themselves. This means not letting an AI bot speak for them in comments or pull requests, which clearly got on the RPCS3 team’s nerves.

At the end of the day, the message from the RPCS3 team is clear, and it’s a brutal but honest one. Quality matters more than quantity, and the team managed to cut through the noise and remind the emulation and AI community that creating something worthwhile requires real critical thinking, blood, sweat, tears, and effort.