Pieter Levels on why WASM game ports are taking off: opening a tab beats booting a console
@levelsio @levelsioX
Why it matters
Early first-hand explanation of the browser-port wave by one of its developers (96k views).
Summary
Quoting @tenobrus’s prediction of sites hosting ‘fully playable free WASM versions’ of AAA games, Pieter Levels says he has been porting classic games to the web with WASM because opening a new tab and typing a URL is far easier than switching on a console or gaming PC and waiting for it to boot.
Metrics read 2026-10-12 via api.fxtwitter.com: 95,577 views, 714 likes.
Archived text
There’s a reason I’ve been porting so many classic games I liked to web with WASM and why this is taking off now I think
Because it’s way easier to just open a new tab, type the URL and start playing than...
Switching on a console or gaming PC, waiting for it to boot,
Quoting @tenobrus: this got taken down within hours, but it’s starting now. within a few months instead of sketchy sites with popup ads hosting torrents of the latest AAA games a few days post release, we’re going to have sites hosting fully playable free WASM versions of AAA games. whole libraries of them, just there at a click, zero download required, zero risk of viruses, zero effort or thought.
i would call this an existential threat to the gaming industry if it weren’t for the fact that every input to previously $100-200 mil AAA games is actively dropping by orders of magnitude in cost and time. instead it’s more of a cambrian explosion.