A Clone of a Clone: Indie Devs Face Rising Tide of AI-Assisted Asset Theft

The indie development scene is currently grappling with a messy situation involving recursive copying and AI-assisted asset theft, as reported by Kotaku. The saga involves multiple clones of Studio Bitdot’s viral hit, Needle In A Haystack Simulator.

NoGlyph, the team behind one of these clones, recently accused the developers of another title, A Game About Needle In A Haystack by Little Field Studios, of stealing their code. According to a post by NoGlyph on Steam, their team discovered 13 classes with identical names within the competitor’s game files. Lead developer Jahvin further stated on Discord that the game contained 39 methods that were “byte-for-byte identical,” even including error messages that referenced non-existent shaders from the original project.

The Rise of Vibe-Coding

This incident highlights a growing trend of “vibe-coding”—a process where developers use AI tools like Claude to decompile closed-source games and reconstruct the code for their own projects. Critics argue this allows copycats to replicate complex indie projects in near-real-time. The impact is already being felt across the industry; for instance, the developers of Drunken Goddess Reflux recently canceled their planned Steam demo out of fear that AI-driven clones would replicate their work before the full game could reach the market.

Why it matters

For players, this wave of AI-assisted cloning signals a significant shift in how indie games are released and marketed. Because independent developers often lack the resources to engage in prolonged legal battles, many are now choosing to pull public demos, avoid early access, and reduce the number of trailers or public gameplay reveals to protect their intellectual property.

This trend creates a less transparent environment for gamers, who may find fewer opportunities to demo upcoming titles. While some Steam users have reacted with cynicism toward the situation—noting the irony of a clone developer complaining about being cloned—the systemic risk remains that creative indie projects may be buried under an avalanche of low-effort, AI-generated “slop” that aims to capitalize on trends rather than innovate.