'If you can’t show your game to the world without fearing it’ll be cloned, something’s broken' says Moonlighter studio on its canceled demo
Opus 5.5 continues to wreak havoc among independent devs.
Moonlighter and Cataclismo studio Digital Sun Games have canceled plans to release a public playtest for their upcoming tower defense-vania roguelike game, ReVamp. The cancellation is due to a recent surge in AI-generated clones and decompiles, resulting in thousands of cheap and low-quality products flooding platforms like Steam and Roblox.
The studio fears that their concept and code could be stolen and turned into clones within days, which is unprecedented. Digital Sun Games' marketing manager, Israel Mallén, informed that moving the playtest to Discord allows for more control, such as requiring NDAs and monitoring activity, but it significantly reduces the number of participants from tens of thousands to a few hundred.
The studio believes that platforms need to implement stronger protections for original work to allow developers to share their games with fans without fear of plagiarism. They aim to continue public playtests and demos closer to the launch date, despite losing the ability to gather feedback from a large scale and timely community engagement.
The studio emphasizes that the current situation raises new risks in game development, and the industry needs to address the protection of original work.
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