Indie game developers hold back demos over AI-made clones

In short: Indie game developers are becoming more cautious about sharing early demos because AI coding tools can make fast copies of their games.

What's going on

Alliance Arts, an indie game publisher and developer, said it will delay a planned public demo for its game Drunken Goddess Reflex during Steam Next Fest. The team said it worries the demo could be used to “quickly imitate or replicate” the game’s look and gameplay with AI or other tools, and that copies could appear before the official launch.

Instead of a wide public release, Alliance Arts said it plans to show the demo in “closed sessions” only. People who get access would need to follow rules about posting and streaming gameplay.

Other developers say they feel similar pressure. Lucas Pope, the developer behind Papers, Please, said on a podcast that he is less comfortable talking about work in progress, because it might get “slurped up by AI” and copied.

Some of these fears have already played out. Developer Freya Holmér shared a video of a prototype game that remixes the basic Tetris idea around a rotating center. Within days, playable copies showed up online. Another developer, Charlie Greenman, who posted one of those copies, told 404 Media he did not think it was wrong.

What to watch

Steam events and public demos have been a common way for small studios to get attention. If more teams move to private previews, it could become harder for players to discover new games, and easier for copycats to stay one step behind, like tracing a sketch as soon as an artist shows it.

Source: Arstechnica