The invisible clones

For decades, the video game industry has coexisted with clones — games that replicate mechanics from prior successes with slightly altered names and generic graphics. The problem wasn't new, but the scale has shifted radically. With generative AI-based "vibecoding" tools, a single developer can now reproduce and publish a clone game in hours or days, often before the original even launches.

The emblematic case is that of Freya Holmér, a Swedish developer who shared a 50-second video in March 2026 on Bluesky showing a Tetris prototype where the board rotates as blocks fall. The idea received a positive response and launch requests. Within days, Holmér found at least four clones already published on app stores — all created with AI tools. "You get this anxiety any time you post anything," she said. "It's like people are waiting for anything you make to finish it for you, monetize it, and steal the whole concept."

The Midnight Works effect

What's alarming is not just speed, but industrial scale. A former employee of Midnight Works, a Moldova-based studio accused of flooding digital stores with clones, told 404 Media that the company already had an established model of recreating popular games within months, renaming them, and selling them for a few dollars. With the arrival of generative AI, every step of the pipeline was accelerated: from banners and screenshots to interfaces and 3D models, everything can now be generated automatically.

The most extreme case involved the horror game The Backrooms 1998 by Steelkrill Studio, whose developer discovered his game had been copied almost entirely by Cool Devs — a company connected to Midnight Works — including personal home videos and VHS recordings he had embedded in the original.

Why clones are different now

Clones have always existed. Zygna was accused by publishers like EA of stealing mechanics and ideas. What changed is the barrier to entry. Tools like Claude allow a person with no coding experience to assemble a working game in days, using only prompts. The barrier that once required months of study and practice has vanished.

But the philosophical question runs deeper than code. Charlie Greenman, creator of the "Rotris" clone of Holmér's game, told 404 Media he didn't care about the original: "When it gets to that point, is one song copying another a copy? One game copying another? Whoever created Blox, Jenga — is that a copy of Tetris?". The answer seems to depend on who you ask.

What developers are doing

The reaction has been varied. Some have simply stopped sharing prototypes. Lucas Pope, creator of Papers, Please, said in April 2026 on the Mike & Rami Are Still Here podcast that he now avoids talking about work in progress for fear it will be "slurped by AI."

In October 2026, the trend reached a breaking point: two studios cancelled public demos of their games due to clone fears. Digital Sun, developer of Moonlighter and Cataclismo, announced it would reduce the public playtest of its next game, ReVamp, to its Discord server only. "With launch still months away, sharing a build with tens of thousands of players felt like too big a risk," the studio said. Alliance Arts and Who You cancelled the public demo of Drunken Goddess Reflux on October 16, opting for closed sessions.

Platform responses

Digital platforms have begun to react. Nintendo restructured its eShop Best Sellers ranking to classify by revenue rather than downloads, a change that blunts the visibility of clones — which typically cost $2 or less and inflate download counts. The PlayStation 5 removed AI-generated game lots from the PSN Store. Valve, however, has been less agile.

The Allumeria case, an indie game nearly removed from Steam after a DMCA sent by a bot from Tracer.AI (allegedly on behalf of Microsoft), showed how an automated protection system can be as aggressive as the clones themselves.

The future

The paradox is that while generative AI democratizes game creation, it is also destroying the trust that sustains indie innovation. If not sharing is the only protection, then the ecosystem loses something fundamental: the exchange of ideas that drives new mechanics, styles, and experiences.

What remains is an unanswered question: will the industry evolve protections before indie developers stop posting, sharing, and eventually creating altogether?

Sources: Wired, Kotaku, 404 Media

✓ Independent sources cross-checked and verified before publishing