Popular video games have always attracted copycats, but the barrier–and timeline–for creating them has recently and suddenly been significantly lowered. The advent of generative AI and vibe-coding has made it nearly trivial for individuals with even light coding experience to pump out a fully formed copy of a popular game, or even an upcoming one. As a result, developers can have their ideas taken out from under them, siphoning money or enthusiasm for their own original ideas.
The problem of easy copycats came to a head recently during Steam Next Fest, the platform’s discoverability event that focuses on free demos of upcoming games. The recent Next Fest was awash with AI slop and even led some developers to consider abstaining from releasing demos.
To better understand the problem, GameSpot spoke with three developers, via email and direct messages, whose perspectives on the problem vary. But they agree that there’s no clear path forward for studios to combat copycats, and change will need to come from platform holders themselves.
Rami Ismail is familiar with game clones. When his studio, Vlambeer, was preparing the release of mobile game Ridiculous Fishing in 2011, it was undercut by a clone called Ninja Fishing that beat it to the punch and made lots of money in the process, demoralizing the studio. Although that situation predates the AI vibe-coding era, the story of Vlambeer is a precursor to what we’re seeing now.
“It was devastating,” Ismail said. “We had a firm belief that creativity was worthwhile, and the clone very quickly reminded us that ultimately, people with money will cynically steal anything they can. It was terrifying: We were firm believers in making the best possible games we could, and we were now reconsidering everything.”
Ismail said that today, in his conversations with other developers, there’s a lot of uncertainty around marketing.
“You either make a game slowly while building up a community, or you make something with a good hook quickly and hope it goes viral–in both cases, as soon as you gain momentum, you’re easy prey for any asshole with a Claude account and $3,000 of tree-burning money,” he said.
The problem of AI clones didn’t exactly come out of left field for developers. While many in the hobbyist community are only learning about it recently, those with an ear to the ground have been seeing steady progress toward the current situation. Ismail said the conversation around AI has been swirling for a few years now, as the technology has progressed from a purely technical experiment and then moved into artistic pursuits like writing, art, and music.
Mike Futter, director of operations and publishing at Causeway Studios and producer with Strange Scaffold, said that since derivative works have been a problem in the industry since before AI, it wasn’t surprising that cloners quickly adopted the new technology.
“So while I hadn’t heard about specific accusations or AI-enabled cloning until the wave of AI decompiling hit the mainstream recently (targeting major subscription software providers), it didn’t surprise me one bit,” Futter said. “And, because you can’t protect game mechanics, we need platform support to protect developers.”
Legal protections for games can include elements like art assets, sound, or narrative, but game mechanics themselves are much more difficult to copyright, especially when they’re broad ideas or concepts.
“When I hear about platforms turning a blind eye to AI slop that’s worse than the shovelware of yesteryear, it deeply saddens me,” Futter continued. “If platforms won’t help create a firewall for developers, they should do it for the consumers clamoring for tools to weed out the slop.”
Digital Sun, the studio that pulled back on its plans for a public demo for its upcoming game ReVamp, citing the danger of AI clones, said through a spokesperson that it had been watching other games struggle with clones or change plans based on the danger they present.
“[Needle in a Haystack Simulator] went viral on social media before it even had a Steam page, and now there are several identical clones of it,” the studio said. “But what turned it into a real problem for us was Drunken Goddess Reflux. A game with over 500,000 wishlists was afraid to release a demo, when it should be exactly the opposite. Sure, a clone wouldn’t have its wishlists, and probably not its incredible animation, either. But we don’t know how fast the technology will keep advancing, or whether measures will be taken to protect original games. That uncertainty is what’s pushing us to be cautious and change the way we connect with players, moving public builds closer to launch.”
Needle in a Haystack Simulator is a major example of the problem, inspiring so many clones that the developer has cracked jokes about it. The game, which itself is something of a tongue-in-cheek joke based on the old idiom, challenges you to find a single needle in a pile of 5 million pieces of hay. That kind of simple viral concept is ripe for imitation. And Drunken Goddess Reflux developer Alliance Arts issued its own statement, pulling plans for a demo on October 16, days before Digital Sun followed suit.
The developers we spoke to had differing opinions on their own use of AI. Ismail said developers tend to be curious about new technologies, so like many others, he’s experimented with Large Language Models (LLMs) in a closed environment. Digital Sun said it has used AI as an assistive tool in development, but generates all of its own assets, and has firm guidelines on use of the technology. Futter said his studio, Causeway, is staunchly anti-AI and therefore does not use it for any experiments or assistance.
For its part, Digital Sun moved its playtest from Steam to Discord. The studio said this allows it to limit who has access to its build of the game, with individual vetting for each user it grants access, and that helps reduce the possibility of clones. But logically, such a move comes at a cost. Public demos can be a major source of word-of-mouth buzz and even helpful metrics like Steam wishlists. Being forced to sacrifice that for fear of a slapdash AI clone hurts developers.
Futter said that, for the time being, developers will need to be prudent about what they share publicly and in demos.
“Releasing demos is still important in 2026, but we have to be that much more careful about when and what we share publicly,” he said. “One tip I learned from Brenda Romero when writing The GameDev Business Handbook is that developers should hold back at least one feature. Don’t talk about it. Don’t show it. Don’t hint at it. And now, don’t include anything about it in your public builds. Cloners (AI or otherwise) can’t copy what they’ve never seen.”
Ismail is more cynical about the situation. The threat of clones stealing the work of developers makes it hard to gain attention outside of the platforms that are already taking a big chunk of the sale price of each game sold. He said that the threat of clones, and studios being wary of releasing demos, “leaves developers with exactly zero ways of marketing their game that doesn’t involve paying the ultra-rich even more money on top of the 30% they were already paying them. This outcome is a feature, not a bug.”
Anthropic recently pushed out an update to the Claude Code prompt that seems aimed at stemming the tide of AI-generated clones, but how effective it will be, and if other AI models follow suit, remains to be seen.
For Valve’s part, it has said it is aware of the problem of AI slop and looking into solutions. That statement was specifically in reference to the glut of AI slop that crowded the Next Fest charts, but naturally, better curation tools would help weed out low-effort clones as well. That said, Valve hasn’t named any specific initiatives to address the problem, nor does it want to ban AI usage, and the developers widely agree that the solutions aren’t clear.
“[The solution] has to come from the platforms, ideally in conversation with developers, publishers and players,” Digital Sun stated. “What does seem clear is that the current measures, like AI disclosures as they’re set up today, aren’t enough for a reality that has completely changed with the arrival of AI. These tools are evolving really fast, and we all need to find a way to keep up.”
Ismail, similarly, was at a loss for an answer.
“‘Ban it’ isn’t going to work logistically, technically, or legally–no matter how much I’d love that,” he said. “I think this is really going to be up to the developers and the audience on this one. I don’t think we’re getting a retry on AI, if they’re successful–like F2P, it’ll infect everything.”
Futter, meanwhile, challenged platform holders like Steam to take their responsibility seriously, not just for the sake of players, but for the health of their own storefronts. If these stores become too inundated with AI slop and copycats, that will ultimately hurt their businesses, too.
“It is not unreasonable to ask platforms to give us a simple tool to filter out AI slop,” he said. “It is not an unreasonable ask for there to be penalties for not adhering to platform guidelines on AI disclosure. We know that the pushback against AI is working, because developers are hiding its use. We can already ignore titles one-by-one. We can weed out certain types of offerings, like adult-oriented games. Harsh penalties for failing to disclose are a matter of truth in advertising. If games are required to disclose use of AI on a store page (arguably one of the most powerful advertisements for a game), then failure to disclose amounts to deceptive marketing.”
However advanced and well-hidden AI copies get, though, Ismail said it will not be a substitute for the artistry of game development. The human touch comes from experience and fine-tuning, from play, and that’s not something an LLM can replicate.
“In 1979, an IBM training manual stated that, ‘A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision,'” he said. “A recent variant of that quote that stuck with me is that ‘A computer can never be spiteful or horny, therefore a computer must never make art.’ Having lived game development up close for decades, I believe game dev is not a scientific or technical job: The magic of game development exists in the messy, soft, human, confusing parts in between–the discussions between the programmer and artist that each see the world so differently but learned to communicate, the lines of dialogue that came from the pain of someone’s recent breakup or the thrill of their recent crush, the fifth stubborn attempt at getting a mechanic just right despite everybody else having moved on.”
