Indie studio cancels horror drinking game demo over fears of AI cloning

[Cobra69]

Alliance Arts has cancelled the public demo of its upcoming horror drinking game Drunken Goddess Reflux, because it fears the game would be quickly cloned by people using AI coding tools. PC Gamer reports that the demo had been due to go live on 19 October. The studio apologised to players for the short notice

The worry is that a playable demo gives copycats everything they need. Someone could play it, describe its mechanics to an AI coding assistant and push out a cheap imitation before the real game launches. For a small studio with a distinctive idea, that could wipe out the advantage of being first

PC Gamer cites indie developer Sos Sosowski, who has talked about this risk before. Cloning is nothing new in games, of course. Mobile hits have been copied for years. What has changed is the speed, because tools that write code from a description make it far cheaper to produce a rough copy

There is a cost to this decision as well. Demos are one of the best ways for indie games to build wishlists, especially around events like Steam Next Fest. Cancelling one means fewer people get to try the game, which could hurt its launch more than any clone would

It is a sad sign of the times when developers feel they have to hide their work to protect it. Hopefully stores like Steam get better at spotting and removing obvious copies. Original ideas deserve a fair chance

Is the fear of AI clones justified, or is this an overreaction? And how should stores deal with copycat games?

Developer cancels public demo of its upcoming horror drinking game, fearing it will be instantly cloned by AI vibe coders:www.pcgamer.com