According to SavePoint, the browser-port directory "Ported2Browser" listed a little over 100 games when it launched on September 29, 2026, and had grown to 277 by October 27. France's VGTimes reported on November 1 that it had "nearly 300." SavePoint and VGTimes explain that the site hosts no games itself and instead points visitors to each porter's own page. Meanwhile, that same October, the developer of a separate browser recreation of Call of Duty, unrelated to Ported2Browser, announced that Activision had sent a takedown request. How far can a link directory that doesn't host games avoid copyright risk? US and Japanese copyright law answer that question through different mechanisms.
How Ported2Browser works: pointing to ports without hosting games
According to VGTimes' November 1 article, each Ported2Browser entry is classified by type, such as "emulator," "recompilation," "fan game," "ROM hack," and "in development." Users can filter by platform, genre, and controls (keyboard, gamepad, touch), and works with known bugs carry a separate icon. SavePoint, VGTimes, and the French blog Korben agree that this is a directory that does not distribute game files itself but sends users to the pages of the people who made the ports.
The reported lineup is broad. Examples VGTimes listed as of November 1 include Hollow Knight, Celeste, and Stardew Valley, along with Grand Theft Auto (GTA): Vice City, Super Mario 64, and Half-Life. About half are PC games, and the rest span NES, Game Boy, and Nintendo 64 through PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360. However, the unit of listing is the "browser port," and non-game apps such as the image editor Compositor are included in the count.
The type labels reflect differences in how ports are made. An emulator reproduces the behavior of the original console in software and runs the original game on top of it. Recompilation rebuilds the game's program itself so that it runs in a browser. Tom's Hardware estimates that Quenq's Vice City version runs in the browser on WebAssembly and WebGL 2, using reVC, a project whose source code was recovered through decompilation. Ported2Browser acts as an entry point that lets people find these individual efforts in one place.
The rights status of the listed destinations is not uniform either. SavePoint explains that the listings mix official demos, open-source works, and fan ports, and that some load original game files owned by the user.
The operator is reportedly an individual calling themselves "BrowserBoy," who is said to have announced the launch on the romhacking.net forum. Their real name and location have not been disclosed. Domain registration records (RDAP) show that ported2browser.com was registered on September 15, 2026 through Network Solutions and uses Cloudflare name servers. The site remains online, and visitors may see a screen that checks whether they are human.
If you search by name from Japan after seeing overseas coverage, beware of similarly named but separate sites. ported2browser.sbs calls itself an "independent guide" and carries ads and a redirect to another site, wasmarcade.sbs. SavePoint says ported2browser.org is also an unrelated site.
About four weeks after launch: 277 listings and a wave of coverage in October
The timeline below lines up listing counts and nearby events in date order. The listing counts are the figures each outlet gave at the time of its article; no intermediate numbers have been filled in.
| Date | Event | Reported by |
|---|---|---|
| Sept. 15, 2026 | ported2browser.com domain registered | RDAP |
| Sept. 29 | Ported2Browser launches with just over 100 listings | SavePoint |
| Oct. 6 | Browser version of GTA V on unofficial site playgta5.com goes down within hours | GodisaGeek, HotHardware |
| Oct. 9 | Reports on a surge of browser ports decompiled with AI | Kotaku |
| Oct. 10–11 | Developer Luckey Faraday discloses Activision takedown request | GameRiv, TweakTown, XDA |
| Oct. 14 | 200+ listings | Korben |
| Oct. 16 | 217 listings | SavePoint |
| Oct. 27 | 277 listings | SavePoint (update) |
| Nov. 1 | Nearly 300 listings | VGTimes |
Counting from launch, Ported2Browser grew from just over 100 listings to nearly 300 in about a month, and during that October the shutdown of the GTA V browser version on playgta5.com and the disclosure of Activision's takedown request followed. However, none of the rights-holder actions in the table was directed at Ported2Browser itself. Some suspect that playgta5.com's shutdown resulted from a rights holder's takedown request, but there is no official confirmation. Activision has not published a notice either, so the existence of the takedown request rests on the developer's account.
Ported2Browser's name spread through individuals' posts. Introductions on social media and overseas blogs came one after another in October: an announcement was posted to Reddit's r/Portmaster, France's Korben covered it on October 14, and an introductory post appeared on Threads on October 18. Still, the numbers for individual reactions are modest. Another introductory post on Threads had 972 views, and a post on the forum Discuit drew 9 votes and 2 comments. There is also no sign that the site itself drew significant attention on Hacker News or X.
What overseas media covered in the same period was less Ported2Browser alone than the broader trend of "browser ports made with AI." Kotaku wrote on October 9 that hundreds of AI-decompiled emulators and games had appeared in roughly the previous two weeks, attributing this to the decompilation abilities of Anthropic's AI model Claude Opus 5.5. An October 8 post on X quoted in the article showed browser versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: CE, GTA: Vice City, Skate 3, and The Simpsons: Hit and Run. The number is Kotaku's own estimate and has not been independently verified. Within this wave, Ported2Browser took on the role of gathering scattered ports in one place.
Recreations using original assets versus ports that load files you already own
Luckey Faraday, who disclosed the Activision takedown request, said on X on October 10–11, "Activision just DMCA'd me for porting CoD games to the browser." (DMCA refers to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.) According to Faraday, related posts were removed and all the games went offline. The two affected works were "Claude of Duty: Vibe Slops II," a recreation of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 multiplayer, and "Kino der Toten," a recreation of a Zombies-mode map. Activision has not published the notice and has not commented.
According to TweakTown and XDA, the project pages for Faraday's two works stated that maps, models, and animations were exported from the original PC version and used. What can be confirmed is only that a takedown request was issued against projects that incorporated assets from the original. Activision has not explained its reasons for the takedown, and it has not been confirmed that the use of assets was the deciding factor.
To read this case, it helps to remember that a game consists of two parts. One is the program that moves characters and decides hit detection and wins and losses; this is the side that can be rewritten through decompilation or recompilation. The other is data such as maps, 3D models, animations, and audio, in other words assets. Even if the program is rewritten from scratch, recreating the original's look and sound in a browser requires assets. What gets distributed differs depending on whether those assets are exported from the original and bundled with the port, or loaded from the original game files on the user's own machine.
Takedowns and re-releases have also occurred with GTA. In December 2025, DOS Zone was reported to have pulled its browser version of GTA: Vice City after receiving a DMCA takedown request from Take-Two. Tom's Hardware then reported that in September 2026 browser versions of Vice City and GTA III became playable again on Quenq.
Tom's Hardware reported, in a headline for an earlier article, that DOS Zone's old version was taken down even though it required users to own the original game files. The magazine also wrote that DOS Zone's current Vice City and GTA III are published in a form that asks users to upload assets, seeing the takedown request as having changed how the games are distributed. This is an example showing that even a method that loads files the user already owns can be subject to a takedown request, but this fact alone cannot pinpoint why Take-Two requested the removal.
This difference applies directly to Ported2Browser's listed destinations as well. As SavePoint explains, official demos, open-source works, fan ports, and methods that load owned files sit side by side in the same list. No reporting or official judgment indicates which method is free of problems. What can be said is that rights status differs by link destination, and that this is hard to tell from the appearance of the directory.
What US and Japanese copyright law require of link directory operators
Section 512(d) of the US Copyright Act covers service providers that link to the location of infringing material through "information location tools" such as directories, indexes, and hyperlinks. The statute provides that a provider is not liable for monetary relief if it meets conditions such as: (1) it does not actually know of the infringement and is not aware of facts making the infringement apparent, or, upon becoming aware, promptly removes or disables the link; (2) it does not receive a direct financial benefit from the infringing activity where it has the right and ability to control that activity; and (3) it promptly removes or disables the link upon receiving notice of infringement.
This provision is one of the mechanisms known as "safe harbors," which relieve businesses of liability if they meet certain conditions. The key point lies in the content of those conditions. Section 512(d) is a provision for the party that places the link in the first place, and the conditions the statute lists do not include the requirement that the provider not host the linked material itself. Whether immunity is available depends on how the service is run: whether it promptly removes links after learning of infringement or receiving notice, and whether it avoids direct profit from infringement.
In Japan, the 2020 amendment to the Copyright Act (Reiwa 2), effective October 1, 2020, introduced measures against leech sites. Operating a "leech site" that collects links to infringing content and guides users to it became subject to criminal penalties (up to 5 years, prosecuted only on complaint). Providing links to infringing content on leech sites and similar sites is also deemed copyright infringement, making it subject to civil remedies and criminal penalties of up to 3 years (prosecuted only on complaint).
The Agency for Cultural Affairs' explanation divides the regulated targets into two types: those that "deliberately guide the public to infringing works" and those "used mainly for the public's use of infringing works." As a general matter, it explains that even a site with many lawful links can be covered if its structure clearly leads to infringing content, as can a site where links to infringing content account for half or more. Link collections for streaming-format infringing content are also included, and whether a site falls within the rules is ultimately decided by the courts.
| Item | US (Copyright Act §512(d)) | Japan (Reiwa 2 amendment, leech-site measures) |
|---|---|---|
| Nature of the provision | Conditionally relieves liability of service providers that place links | Regulates operating leech sites and providing infringing links on them |
| Conditions for liability or immunity | Immune if the provider promptly removes links after knowledge or notice, does not profit directly from infringement it can control, etc. | Covers sites that deliberately guide users to infringing material or are used mainly for its use. Applicability is decided by the courts |
| Type of sanction | Civil liability for monetary relief; criminal liability not addressed | Operation: criminal penalty (up to 5 years, on complaint). Link provision: deemed infringement, civil remedies and criminal penalty (up to 3 years, on complaint) |
For sites that collect links to infringing material, US copyright law has a mechanism that frees providers from monetary liability if they meet conditions such as prompt removal after knowledge or notice, while Japanese copyright law makes operating a site primarily devoted to guiding users to infringing content itself subject to criminal penalties. Because the two systems are different in kind, it is hard to say simply which is stricter. Even so, they share one point: neither treats a link directory as unrelated simply because it does not host the material.
Which provision Ported2Browser would fall under cannot be derived directly from this. The operator BrowserBoy's location has not been disclosed, so which country's law applies is also undetermined. Whether each listed destination constitutes infringing material depends on how individual assets are handled and whether permission exists.
The operator's takedown handling and each destination's rights status shape the risk
As of November 5, 2026, no takedown request, statement, or lawsuit against Ported2Browser itself has been reported. All the actions in the table were directed at projects of the same kind as the link destinations.
Kotaku's Lewis Parker argued in his October 9 article that even if Take-Two and Microsoft lawyers get ports removed, other versions will be made because they are easy to build. The history of Vice City, which became playable again on Quenq about nine months after DOS Zone's version was pulled, overlaps with this view. In a situation where ports vanish and reappear, the directory side too is called on to make a judgment each time it adds a new destination.
Laying the two systems side by side, the paths by which a link directory can lower its risk can be read from the statutes and the Agency for Cultural Affairs' materials. Under US §512(d), the core of the conditions is a practice of promptly removing links after learning of infringement or after notice from a rights holder. Under the Agency for Cultural Affairs' guideposts, what matters is not listing destinations suspected of infringement and keeping the list as a whole from tilting toward guiding users to infringing content. This does not mean Ported2Browser is actually doing so; these are conditions that apply to the link-directory format in general.
Players also have clues for telling the difference. On the destination page, check whether the port bundles and distributes the original's assets, loads files the user already has, or is an official demo or open-source work. There is no guarantee that any method is free of problems, and this only adds material for judgment, but it still gives a better picture than playing based on the directory's list alone.
Not hosting games alone does not erase a link directory's copyright risk. Whether Ported2Browser publicly states its listing criteria and its policy for handling takedown requests will be the next gauge of the site's risk.