AI-powered game cloning is making life harder for indie devs

Indie developer Freya Holmér posted a 50-second clip of a rotating Tetris concept she had been developing, and within days multiple AI-generated clones appeared on app stores. That rapid turnaround is becoming the new normal, and it's already changing how developers think about sharing work in public.

Using tools like Claude, a single person can go from watching a viral clip to publishing a playable clone in a matter of days — sometimes before the original game has even launched. Charlie Greenman did exactly that with Holmér's idea, building his own version called Rotris after a few AI prompts and roughly a day of work. He told 404 Media he had no ethical concerns: "I really can care less about the game. I feel like I had this brand new creation." He compared it to one song borrowing from another, or Jenga being a copy of Tetris. Beyond solo opportunists, 404 Media also reports that larger studios are industrialising the process. A former employee of Moldova-based Midnight Works — a company accused of flooding storefronts with cloned games — described a "long-established" blueprint: recreate a popular game in a few months, give the clone a similar name, sell it cheap, and hope confused buyers pick the knockoff over the original. That former staffer confirmed generative AI was used at "every step," covering everything from banners and screenshots to UI elements and 3D models.

Game cloning is nothing new — Zynga spent years being accused by publishers including EA of lifting mechanics wholesale — but AI collapses the time and skill barrier that previously kept casual copycats in check. When a clone can be assembled in a day and listed on Steam or the App Store for a dollar or two, it doesn't need to match the original's quality or charm to siphon off sales. Storefronts are already struggling with shovelware volume; PlayStation has reportedly been removing AI slop from PSN, but enforcement is reactive rather than preventive.

Holmér summed up the chilling effect bluntly: "It disincentivises me from posting about my work. You get this anxiety any time" you share something early. For indie developers whose entire marketing strategy depends on building hype through early footage and social media buzz, that anxiety has real costs — and there's no obvious fix on the horizon.