Galoob v. Nintendo is so narrow in scope that it probably doesn't even cover games made today. Hell, people trying to resell Duke Nukem mods tried to rely on it and the courts said no.
Nowadays the business model for most games is not to sell the game, but to sell unlock keys or other subscription items that could be trivially unlocked with a cheat device. Furthermore, just using that cheat device almost certainly requires defeating a DMCA 1201 technical protection measure. So my gut feeling is that it's probably already been overturned simply by shifting business practices and changes to the law.
"Tainting" isn't necessarily how the law works, either. The standard for copyright infringement in the US is access plus substantial similarity. If you have access, then you need to make sure any code you write is different enough (as determined by a jury) from what you've seen. Merely having seen NT kernel code doesn't mean you legally can't write any kernel code at all - you don't have to prove a negative of "well I didn't remember X". The court (and jury) is going to look at what you wrote and what Microsoft alleges you copied, and then try to determine if it's actually a copy or not.
Nowadays the business model for most games is not to sell the game, but to sell unlock keys or other subscription items that could be trivially unlocked with a cheat device. Furthermore, just using that cheat device almost certainly requires defeating a DMCA 1201 technical protection measure. So my gut feeling is that it's probably already been overturned simply by shifting business practices and changes to the law.
"Tainting" isn't necessarily how the law works, either. The standard for copyright infringement in the US is access plus substantial similarity. If you have access, then you need to make sure any code you write is different enough (as determined by a jury) from what you've seen. Merely having seen NT kernel code doesn't mean you legally can't write any kernel code at all - you don't have to prove a negative of "well I didn't remember X". The court (and jury) is going to look at what you wrote and what Microsoft alleges you copied, and then try to determine if it's actually a copy or not.