Comment by rcr-anti
2 days ago
Some context to this, there's been a bunch of discussion in indie game development spaces about how it might be risky to release demos, or any information really, since a bunch of (probably? can't necessarily assume now.) people seem to immediately try to clone it with agents. It's to the extent I've seen genuine confusion about which game is the original in Twitch streams/chats. There have been a bunch of takes one way or another on it, including 'if your game is clone-able from a demo your idea isn't unique or complex enough'.
Ars's bit on it recently: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/ai-game-clones-are-ma...
I wouldn't even say this fixes that problem, it just adds a slight barrier above pointing it at existing code and telling it to remake this thing. Someone could still thoroughly describe a game and get passable slop results not too far removed from the original. Unless the game is well-known, this probably isn't fixable.
If anything, this hurts game preservation, because this has been a fantastic tool for getting old games working on newer systems without years of effort.
Slopmakes will still happen at basically the same rate with a very marginal amount of added effort, but anything seeking compatability with old formats will suffer. Not to mention that most likely the Chinese models will be doing this in ~6 months anyway if the trend holds. You might even be able to get a Chinese model now like DS4.1 or K3.1 to framework your new slopmake, then convince Claude you're the creator and finish the job.