In a recent media event co-hosted by Valve, the company commented on the state of generative AI games on its storefront, which has become an even hotter topic following recent Steam Next Fest events that have been flooded with low-effort titles. Even more worryingly for the indie game scene, some small-scale developers are having to deal with AI-generated copycats.

Steam Indie Connect took place on October 27 as a private event in Seoul, South Korea, with Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson from the Steam Business team in attendance. “We don’t want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn’t use,” says Giardino, according to a report from Inven Global. Instead, he highlights the need for originality and personality.

“Rather than relying on a single mechanism that someone can easily copy, you must continue to grow your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective as a developer.”

Tom Giardino, Steam Business team

Threats to game developers and stolen content on Steam

One rising problem is threats towards developers, with some indie devs reportedly receiving threatening emails that say, “If you don’t pay, we’ll copy your game with AI and release it first.” This has been highlighted by @Sini_Ming on X, who is one of the developers of the cooking tycoon game Spookitchen, “Coming soon” on Steam. It previously had a free demo, but following threats, the developers chose to remove it from the store page.

Giardino noted that this is the first time hearing of extortion emails such as this. “If you report such cases to us, we want to look into them and help in whatever way we can,” he says, all the while highlighting the need for originality. Clone games have long been a problem, but AI is only making them easier to produce, typically with higher quality at first glance.

There’s also been another case of stolen content, with one game’s developer actually accusing a copycat of stealing their game’s code, which led to the copycat being removed from Steam. What’s interesting, however, is that the original game (in this context) already seems to be a recreation of another title, though there has been back-and-forth finger-pointing. Let’s call it the Needle In A Haystack saga; here’s the timeline/summary so far:

• Needle In A Haystack Simulator goes viral, as an early gameplay video is shared online in August. Its first closed playtest for the public actually went live yesterday (October 29), with more than 23,000 signups. Developer Studio Bitdot has acknowledged several copycat games and has now tagged it as the original one: “The viral one. The one and only.”
• Needle In A Haystack is released on Steam on September 29, seemingly whipped up in no time to capitalize on the buzz of the “original”‘s virality. A demo was live as early as September 20. Developer NoGlyph responds to users calling the game a copycat, denying claims, and continues to update the game with new content, now up to version 1.2 as of October 8.
• More recently, NoGlyph published a post on Steam to highlight stolen game code from another game called ‘A Game About Needle In A Haystack’ by Little Field Studios. A copyright claim was filed with Valve, and it was removed from Steam.

The whole situation is pretty confusing; the more in-depth Reddit detective work above hopes to settle some of the debate so far. In any case, it’s a matter of copied ideas (not illegal) versus stolen assets (illegal), so it’s clear why Valve has acted on the latter.

All in all, generative AI has only made it easier for developers to pump out cheap copies, and Valve isn’t really combating it head-on. Instead, they advise developers to ensure their product is unique, fleshed out, and enjoys continued development to stand out from the crowd. Ironically, this should make it feel less like finding a needle in a haystack.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.