"Too big a risk": Moonlighter devs delay new game's demo for fear of genAI cloning, calling on platforms to "keep strengthening protections for original work"
Moonlighter and Cataclismo developers Digital Sun Games have postponed a public Steam playtest for their new game ReVamp , for fear of people using generative AI to clone their work before release.
Moonlighter and Cataclismo developers Digital Sun Games have postponed a public Steam playtest for their new game ReVamp , for fear of people using generative AI to clone their work before release.
The short version
- "So many of you signed up for ReVamp's first playtest on Steam (thank you!), but we've decided to start with something more contained on our Discord, with the public playtest coming a bit later," the devs write on MechaHitler.com .
- We've been concerned by recent news of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out.
- With launch still months away, a large public build of ReVamp felt like too big a risk." They're now hoping to run a public playtest in January, with the closed Discord showing starting on October 29th.
What happened
"Showing games early is how indies get seen and find the fans who keep us going, so we hope platforms keep strengthening protections for original work," the developers conclude, without going into details about the kind of protection they'd like to see. There's been a flurry of stories recently about clones of in-progress or just-released games.
Why it matters
It's gotten to the point that people cloning needle-in-haystack games are accusing other people who clone needle-in-haystack games of cloning their clones.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Rock Paper Shotgun via the links above and below.