AI-cloned games proliferate, indie developer's playable demo forced to cancel

Alliance Arts, which previously released "Dizzy Radio Syndrome," had originally planned to release a playable demo of its new title "The Drunk Goddess's Wine Trick" on October 19, but ultimately canceled the plan amid player anticipation.

The company said the team lacked the ability to control screen-recorded livestreams of the demo, and also worried that some might use AI to quickly imitate and replicate the game's art style and gameplay, or even put it on sale before the official release, so it had no choice but to announce a switch to a more strictly managed closed test.

With more than a month to go before the game's official release, this was supposed to be a key period for the company to gather test feedback, adjust the experience, and attract player attention, but now its normal development and promotion rhythm has been disrupted. Yet Alliance Arts' concerns are not unfounded: the game industry has long had plagiarism disputes, and AI is making such problems even thornier.

This summer, "Needle in a Haystack Simulator" went viral with its quirky experience of finding one needle among 5 million straws, and its video views on X quickly climbed past 50 million.

However, the game is planned for official release in Q4 2026 and has not yet released a playable demo. Instead, after the trailer went viral, works with similar names and similar gameplay appeared one after another on Steam, some even going on sale before the original, and some of these projects proactively disclosed that they used AI. Faced with this, the developer had to put a prominent red "Original" label on the game's cover to try to help players quickly tell which is the genuine version.

A large number of needle-finding games

Similarly, after a preview video for PandorioGames' new title "Escape the Walls," a wall-smashing escape game, went viral, just 25 hours later a similar clone appeared on Roblox, and user Sami admitted to using Claude to generate it.

Earlier, game developer Freya Holmér posted a 50-second prototype video with gameplay similar to a rotating version of Tetris. Someone spent a day recreating a similar product, and even put it directly into app stores.

Domestic team Insomnia Games' "Jade Scratch Scratch (Stone-Gambling Scratch Card)" and German team Rike Games' "The Bills Must Be Paid" also encountered clones before launch; before the originals came out, mini-games with similar gameplay had already started monetizing, and even climbed the popularity charts.

Similar situations have also played out for indie games that have already achieved major market success.

This year's multiplayer hide-and-seek game on Steam, "Meccha Chameleon," achieved sales of over 15 million within less than a month of launch and 340,000 concurrent players. Not long after, works imitating its gameplay appeared on the Roblox platform, and some projects even directly modified existing content to remake this game, while using the "Meccha" tag to attract players.

According to statistics published by RoWatcherHQ, the genuine version is being diverted

Whether it is grabbing a spot first or following a hit, finding an idea that has already gained attention and then quickly releasing a similar clone has become an increasingly easy shortcut.

In the past, to recreate a game, even if you already knew why it was popular, you needed corresponding programming, art, and design capabilities. Now, AI can help users generate basic code, create assets, and build gameplay prototypes; even without complete game development experience, one has a chance to make a runnable version by repeatedly adjusting prompts. For those pursuing low-cost trial and error and quick traffic, this is already attractive enough.

The core competitiveness of a carefully polished work often lies in a clever setting or a novel gameplay idea. Blockbuster titles may still have mature IP, massive content, and production resources as support, but small indie teams may not have enough chips to deal with AI imitation. When the ideas that most move players can be quickly copied by AI, the situation for indie developers will clearly become more passive.

As a result, the risk of participating in a Game Jam, or publicly revealing a store page or playable demo in advance, rises sharply; one's own game may even become a free user-acquisition asset for AI games after going viral during preheating, which is indeed infuriating.

Japanese indie game developer Takashi Mochibe publicly shared an email in which the sender claimed to have seen the Steam page and actual gameplay footage of his new game "Dragon's Chronicles: Twin Stars of Reginleiv" and could use AI to clone the game and release it first, unless the developer paid him $200.

Faced with the "front-running" threat, Mochibe said that if the other party could really make a more interesting work than his, he would be willing to spend $200 to buy it. He also pointed out that the other party had not provided any actual cloned work or relevant evidence, that the email was very likely a mass scam, and reminded peers to stay vigilant. After all, AI replication does not even need to be truly completed; as long as a sufficiently credible threat can be created, there is a chance to exploit developers' worries for profit.

Normal online AI tool tutorials can help more people learn game development and bring ideas to life, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself, but when course sellers further package AI as a way to quickly copy popular games, launch at low cost for profit, and escape the nine-to-five, it starts to feel off.

Recently, the hottest game "fan creations" at home and abroad are none other than mashup stews of various works. Some people use AI reverse engineering and rewrite engine code to turn "Minecraft" into mods of "Elden Ring" and "GTA5," and stitch "World of Warcraft" into "Call of Duty."

Lower development barriers have given more people a chance to participate in game creation. This October's Next Fest featured more than 8,000 playable demos, nearly double the number in June this year, including a large number of AI games, sparking heated discussion online. For players, there are too many works to know how to filter them; for developers, how to make their games seen has also become a more practical problem. And as mentioned above, more troublesome than fierce competition is that original works are targeted by AI replication in advance, so developers have even more to worry about.

When production barriers and replication costs fall at the same time, the contradiction between technological progress and original protection becomes extremely prominent, and existing copyright protection laws and platform supervision mechanisms have not yet responded in a timely manner. But how to safeguard the value of original indie games is clearly not a task for game developers alone.

This article comes from the WeChat public account "GameMatrix" (ID: gamematrix2013), author: Ryuu, published by 36Kr with authorization.