Game developers cancel upcoming public demo out of fear of AI copycats

By Alex Perry on October 17, 2026

There's currently some tension between the video game industry and the proliferation of AI tools.

You can see the evidence of this in a recent development regarding the upcoming indie game Drunken Goddess Reflux. It's a game with the objective of imbibing alcohol until a demon vomits up her soul, a decidedly unique premise that would be hard for any AI to come up with.

As spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, though, the developers had to cancel an upcoming public demo session. The decision is partly due to concerns that AI could quickly clone it for someone else's financial benefit. Instead, they will hold closed sessions for a "limited number of participants."

"We're concerned that the demo's content could be used to quickly imitate or replicate the game's presentation and gameplay with AI or other tools, and that such works could be released before our launch," the developers at Alliance Arts said in a post on X: https://x.com/AllianceArtsEN/status/2111043223326163101

To be fair, that wasn't the only reason given for the demo's cancellation. There were also concerns about being able to properly enforce a rule against livestreaming. But it's clear that the widespread availability of AI vibe-coding tools influenced this decision, as well.

Kotaku reported earlier this year that indie games were being cloned with AI quickly and effortlessly, and Steam has recently become rife with games that used AI in their development. While cloned products may not be as good as the original games made by hand, they can still harm the developer's bottom line and muddy the waters about which came first in the public eye.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913630&forum_id=2#50194683)

imo, online games still sort of have a Moat since they have to run the servers and have Netcode. But idk how anyone can spend $300,000,000k on developing AAA single-player Titles that bomb 95% of the time anymore. Yeah you can just have AI make the Entire Game but how is that going to resonate with anyone? Zelda is made with Kyoto Craftsmanship. MGS1 is a Hideo Kojima Game. The Last of Us Part 2 was crafted for Liberals, by Liberals. If a single-player Game is literally made by AI, you're going to feel like one of those people in the Pods on The Matrix if you're playing it.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913630&forum_id=2#50194870)