I cannot fathom how this happened.

I am a solo game dev. Yesterday, a player on my Discord was asking the Google Search AI silly questions about my game, to laugh at some of the answers. But the answers sometimes contained surprisingly obscure info that should not be available for a small indie game like mine.

Out of curiosity, I chimed in and asked the player to ask the AI about future contents in my game. Somehow, the AI spitted out the exact & highly specific character name "Vantage Tripod", which I had never mentioned to anyone. As far as I know, the only place where the info exists in a digital form is inside one of my own Google Docs, and this was NOT me speaking to the AI! (The player even asked the questions in incognito).

My game is not big enough for there to be much noise out there to confuse Google's AI, so I guess that's why it managed to give actual, scarily real leaks on my game (without being confused by online speculations), and I have no idea how it knew all this.

The screenshots only included snippets of the conversation. This is the full conversation on Discord, in case you want to get your own opinion on what happened (The entire conversation with the player lasted for an hour, where the AI gave other upcoming content info such as things I'd only ever mentioned on Discord).

Obviously, I'm not paying.

The first video is my actual game. The second video is the game he made with AI. From what I can tell, he found my game through Twitter/social media, fed it into an AI tool, and recreated what he saw. Now he's asking me for $200, otherwise he'll publish his version on Steam.

I'm posting this mainly as a heads-up because I assume I'm probably not the only developer he's going to try this with. I guess we have to be a bit more careful about sharing our projects publicly now. You can spend months building something, post a few videos of it online, and apparently someone can try to recreate it almost immediately with AI.

Just wanted to give other indie devs a heads-up to be careful about what they share publicly.
Note: One person seems to be using two or three different accounts to try to discredit me because I previously criticized a crappy AI slop game. I’m going to look into this a bit more, because I suspect they might be the same person who emailed me. They’ve been contacting me across multiple platforms and trying to make me look bad everywhere Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. They’re also spamming my older posts.

Wasn't expecting this, didn't even know this was a possibility... but it's an unreal sight to see as a dev!

We're a tiny indie team making a game called Appa and our art guys have a background in fine arts hence they can push beyond what looks like regular video game art with their broad perspective. With my whole chest, I believe ai can't ever replace what humans make for humans. Besides, it only scraps amd trains on pre existing art made by humans. Very pleased with how our game is looking rn. We're almost at 10k wishlists. Human made art will always hold its value.

AI is hurting indie game development in a lot of ways. By and large, I think AI as a tool to speed up development makes sense, but there are also a lot of bad actors using it to slop out quick cash grabs. The part that really worries me is seeing people take cool ideas that are still in development and rush out knockoffs before the original game even releases.

As an indie dev, this puts you in a really weird position.

My understanding has always been that you want to start posting about your game early and often. Dev logs, process videos, prototypes, interesting mechanics, gameplay clips, etc. Build an audience while you're building the game instead of finishing it in a cave and hoping people magically care when you launch.

But I'm increasingly seeing stories about AI-assisted developers finding games that are getting attention, copying the core idea, and rushing their own version to market.

This is some Antz vs. A Bug's Life Katzenberg shit.

I'm working on a new game right now, and I'm genuinely conflicted about how much of it I should show. I want to start posting clips because I think the concept is interesting and very shareable. But at the same time, every post is basically a public blueprint: here's the hook, here's why it's fun, here's what people are responding to, and here's evidence that there might be a market for it.

Obviously people have copied successful games forever. That's nothing new. What feels different is how much faster and cheaper it may be becoming to make a passable imitation before a game has even launched.

So what's the move for indie developers now?

Share early and risk getting aped?

Or play it close to the vest and risk launching to nobody?

The game costs less than $5, looks like something most people would scroll past on Steam without a second thought, and yet it sold over 2 million copies in just a few days. That amounts to approximately $9.6 million in gross revenue. It's only been two days, but things are really picking up. With all this hype, I think it'll easily sell twice as much.
I know full well that games like this are one in a million among all the flops out there, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a single developer who had previously released mediocre games that didn’t sell well. He secured a wealthy life for himself with just two months of work.

It gives me a weird feeling, tbh :D

This is yet another example of how players don’t always want massive open worlds, hundreds of hours of content, and budgets bigger than Hollywood movies. Sometimes all it takes is a funny idea, a low price, and a game that’s fun to watch on streams.

Then they proceed to play for another 80 hours.

This really hurt my game reviews :/

UPDATE: They updated their review and I now understand better why they gave a "Not Recommended". It was not because they hate idle games.

UPDATE 2: I've been asked a lot what game this is. The game is Idle Reincarnator on Steam. It's also on Playstore.

Hello, Void Diver team back again 😁

Above is an animated cutscene from one of our story chapters. We usually have a cutscene for each story chapter boss, although they’re normally not quite this long. And we’ve been wondering at what point do cutscenes start to feel like too much for players?

If a game has a cutscene fairly often (for example, after major story/boss fights) do you find that annoying? Or does it mostly depend on how long the cutscene is and whether you’re invested in the story?

For context, we’re trying to strike a balance between telling the story we want to tell and not constantly taking control away from the player.

Would love to hear what you guys think!

job is 2k$/month as stated in the previous post

Hi!

With the influx of AI-made games, I think it's time for indie gamedevs to more proudly display their passion and love for hand-crafting games and experiences.

I'm not going to write a whole manifesto, you guys know what's up in our industry. I simply wanted a positive way to show how I choose to make games and express my love for the craft.

Human Intelligence! or Hi! for short

Feel free to adopt this visual in your own games, promo material or splash screens if you feel that this label accurately represents you and your way of building games. It's free to use, no strings attached.

The different assets in a few colors can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DxXfBd7c3oxFmbskDjdlXAO9AoMjqeob

My team at Retromagine just released the demo for our upcoming incremental action roguelite, IGNOBLE. Instead of using orchestral libraries and samples, we booked a real orchestra with actual players, a real hall, a conductor, the whole thing.

At the moment only the announcement trailer features the real orchestra, but the plan is to record the rest of the music as well (the tracks in the demo are currently orchestral mockups).

In the age of AI, we decided to go old school. Go back to the roots. Do something that we believe has deeper meaning. Do you think that players even care?

Is music important enough to justify that level of work and budget?

Part of me thinks this is exactly what indies should be doing. Leaning into what makes them obsessive and different. What makes them stand out, especially when almost 20,000 games are released on Steam each year. There has to be some real point of differentiation.

Another part of me knows that unless the game is very successful, this won’t make financial sense. And realistically, there’s almost no marketing angle strong enough to justify it on its own.

But to me, this is what being indie means. Doing what we love, not just what’s optimal for the P&L (within reason, of course).

Curious what other devs think.

Smart differentiation or self-indulgence?

The demo is out if anyone wants context. And if anyone is considering recording with a live orchestra for their game, I’m happy to share logistics and real numbers. If there’s interest, I can also write up a detailed breakdown of the whole process.

Yesterday I released my first game, advertised as a "slow and meditative incremental idler".

Today I check the reviews, and the game is teetering on negative. Reviews call the gameplay slow, shallow, and uninspired.

Feedback from the beta testers (after updates) was the opposite... they found it satisfying and enjoyed the unique engagement mechanics and abilities.

Of course nobody has to like my game, but it really hurts when people spend eight hours playing then leave their first ever game review just to say my game is bland. Or feel entitled to it being free. I spent over 1,100 hours on this and it's less than $4 :(

I didn't expect to get rich, but I did think people would like it, especially after the positive feedback from reddit and the testers.

Sorry for the rant, just feeling pretty blue.

Edit: Thanks for cheering me up everyone :)
Edit 2: I'm trying really hard to keep up with all the comments!
Edit 3: I've got my bounce back. A sincere thank you to everyone for all the advice and perspective. I've read every single comment so far, and I'll pick things back up tomorrow :)

For the people wanting to see the reviews: Auto Snakes in Outer Space

I'm reading every single comment and trying to reply to as many as I can (over 450 now!). Here's to the seventh thirteenth hour!

A few video shots from my game Lost Host.

What other dangers could a small RC car face? Write in the comments! 🙂

I know there are a lot of games being made with AI these days, and I understand why people are skeptical. But I've noticed that even games made entirely by hand often get dismissed as "AI slop" without any evidence.

The screenshot is from a post about my game, Capy Farm, where I simply asked people what they thought of it. The first response was to call it "AI slop", despite the fact that I streamed the entire development process from start to finish.

I'm not looking for sympathy, but it's genuinely discouraging. It almost feels like if your game looks polished, some people will assume it was made by AI, while making something intentionally rough or ugly seems to be the only way to avoid those accusations.

Has anyone else experienced this?

As a gamer, I always despised the technique of using yellow paint as a way to show players the way ahead, I always thought that the developer team working behind the project either took players as stupid or didn't believe their ability to show player the way ahead.

However, recently my stand against the yellow paint problem has changed. Recently, I packaged a version of my game for play testers to test and find issues, give feedback, etc. The version I packaged wasn't a vertical slice alone, rather a vertical slice + mechanic test/tutorial map. Players would have to play the mechanic test map and see how the mechanics worked, test each firearm and the difference between them, test the different enemy types and their behaviors. Out of 25 people, only 6 has passed to the vertical slice without my help.

At first you'd think that it's either mine or my environmental designer's fault to make things not obvious. That's what I'd have thought myself if I was in your place as well. However, before introducing player to every new mechanic they come across, I added a giant, floating text, explaining what the mechanic is, how it should be used, how to obstacle should be passed, how the mechanic works, how a type of enemy should be beaten, etc. I placed these texts either right before the player enters the place they would use the mechanic, or right next to it, making sure it always stays in the player's point of view, that they never ever miss it.

Upon observing though, I saw that most people didnt even read the texts. I noticed some people had to be pointed towards the very obvious crawlspace/vent, because they were unsure of where to go, even though it's the only way forward, there is a spot light pointing toward it and a huge text explaining what it is on top of it.

Some of these play testers were Game Design Teachers, some of them were Game Design students, most just gamers like you and me. Maybe it's because how mind numbing everything is that the very obvious choices are not even considered an option for how obvious they are, maybe the gaming industry forced everyone to have need for spoonfed direction/information or maybe, gaming industry adapted into this method because it needed to.

I haven't changed my stance against the yellow paint problem, maybe my play testers were at fault, maybe my "control group" was of players that needed a slight guidance. But I understand it more now. I understand the need for it. I'm not blaming social media, endless doom scrolling for this. Maybe the new age of gaming had to be adapted into short attention spans, maybe players actively choose to not read the texts because they seemed long.

Please, share your experience with this problem and if you did how you were able to beat it. I would love to learn what other game developers think about this, if I am wrong or right about it.

Edit: I also have to point out that the main reason for mechanic test map to exist is for play testers to abuse the mechanics to see if they break and how they break. The texts are not part of the game, wont be in the final product just like how the test map wont be in the final product.

I just got a review on my games demo page where a player complaints about not starting with a team.

Well the trailers first sentence is literally, "In "GAMENAME" you are not managing a football club..."

And the store description does not suggest anywhere that you manage a team either.

I really do not understand how some people are buying games, maybe based on theme or capsule.

But I guess there’s not really any way to prevent reviews like this.

Just glad this happened on the demo at least.

90% of posts that I've seen that start with "This is my game about to release on steam" have just been low effort AI slopfests. 10% are usually amazing.

I was giving someone feedback on their game and store presentation and they used AI to respond to me and forgot to take the prompt out of the text they pasted.

Facepalm

I'm not worried about the AI slop taking over because I feel like they'll all just slop it up at the bottom but damn it's just sad.

I come to these subreddits to find new games and connect with other devs. Real devs.

Shit bums me out.

Translation: These devs seriously push updates every single day. What is wrong with them?

Woke up this morning to find that there are 3 cheaters in my game. They somehow modified their build files to give themselves infinite credits.

You can see the player has 616 credits... That's impossible as the game only grants you 10 ish each round.

I wonder why. I mean my game barely has a couple hundred players. But already has cheaters. Really? Come on. It's not even in a demo state.

The players didn't even play that much.

I guess there are people out there who just look for new playtest games and try to break it?

Game is called The Factory Must Fall. Public Alpha Playtest is available now.

EDIT: One of the cheaters tried it again. Gave themselves 5200 coins but this time the build didn’t get saved 🙌😎