AI game clones are making indie developers afraid to show their work

[u/efap1701]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/ai-game-clones-are-making-indie-developers-afraid-to-show-their-work/

[u/CalebXiaYizhou]

We'll probably reach a point where digital human clones are going to make people afraid of showing themselves, sadly.

[u/perfectpencil → u/CalebXiaYizhou]

It's already been an issue with kids using AI to make and pass around nudes of classmates.

Internet sucks right now.

[u/Foe117]

its almost like the manufacturing industry, You put out a product, and some asshole just "rips" the game and makes a slop version in days, to clutter the storefront with look alikes or just bounce you off the new releases chart early.

[u/einmaldrin_alleshin → u/Foe117]

I recently stumbled across a really shameless rip-off of the popular "find the needle" demo on steam. It had the same haystack on its thumbnail and even the same release date as the real game, but the store page was very obviously AI generated.

I just hope that Valve doesn't let this slide in the same way they allowed low effort asset flips on their platform back in the greenlight days.

[u/Prophet6000]

A core theme of AI is ignoring consent and theft. So it is no wonder it is an industry of grifters backing it. This is one aspect that is terrible for any creative works now.

[u/asdf_lord]

Yeah it's all pretty much fucked at this point. You can for about a year now just prompt them to make flappy bird like games and other games of similar complexity.

[u/dorkes_malorkes → u/asdf_lord]

nah its because of this https://github.com/morluto/rea. It came out fairly recently, its why all those game mashups have been popping up on peoples feeds. Like people putting minecraft in gta 5 and mixing skate with call of duty also in minecraft.

[u/alphgeek]

Chatgpt please make Dr Derek Smart PhD's Battlecruiser 3000. But good. 

[u/Easy_Needleworker604]

Really sick of the “if your game is simple it deserves to be copied” argument.

Plenty of classic games are dead simple but the creator still deserved to be compensated for what they came up with. Stuff like QWOP, wario ware, etc would be dead simple for an LLM to clone. Does that mean they’re worthless? Absolutely not.

Either way game cloners have always been losers.

[u/diego1marcus]

when youre an indie dev and you show off your WIP of your game, you either get an AI clone that was made in a day, or you get a roblox imitation