r/Steam • u/akbarock • 14h ago
Discussion Drunken Godess Reflux Cancels Demo In Fear Of People Using AI To Copy The Game And Release It Before They Can
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4150720/view/7460665810904682481.1k
u/sneedbr0 14h ago
Add roblox clones to the list of fears of releasing games nowadays.
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u/Bagel_Bear 14h ago
The fact that these Roblox games don't get taken down is kind of crazy. Some of them even seem like they just use ripped assets too.
Unless I'm missing something
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u/Practical_Entrance43 14h ago
Yeah I remember the PEAK devs talking about a Roblox version of their game (which also ironically had ai in it) and a shit ton of microtransactions. Even told people they would rather have people pirate their game than play the roblox one.
Obvs not all roblox devs do it, but some will see a trendy game and know kids want to play it - resulting in them making a "free" version for them.→ More replies (4)87
u/Blackarm777 11h ago
PEAK is a game made with so much care too. Sucks to hear people bastardizing their work.
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u/Practical_Entrance43 10h ago
Literally though, and really cheap for the amount of content within the game.
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u/DaHolk 10h ago
It's be cause game mechanics abstractly aren't protected.
And I am pretty sure that is generally not a bad thing. Imagine the same level of clusterfucking creativity if what happens in the music sector, namely even minutest bits of sampling having become "an issue that requires consent and licensing" applied to that level of detail to "gameplay concepts".
Can you imagine if "rock paper scissors" and all it's iterations or applications where held by someone the same way "happy birthday" was?
Or if during the modding haydays or the flash haydays literally EVERY mod would have been dmcaed for "stealing a game mechanic"?
I mean, at least "roling a dice for a random outcome" would be public domain by now .... But just imagine...
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u/DarthOmix 10h ago
Some actually have been historically. Infamously, Warner Brothers has the copyright/patent to the Nemesis System from the Shadow of Mordor games and just sits on it without licensing it. Meanwhile, I think it was Namco actually held a copyright/patent for minigames during loading screens which is why it's been such a rare thing for years. I think this one ultimately lapsed or was revoked, not that loading screens are long enough for it to matter on average anymore.
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u/DaHolk 10h ago
The difference is that patents run out. And you can actually challenge them. And they need to be about something very specific, not just "the entire game is patented".
I actually have forgotten what happened to Magic's "turning a card by 90° degrees to mark use aka tapping" patent.
I was rather making the point that "hey they copied my game" (and btw 'as best they even can in this weird jank build your own game engine ecosystem'), would be a nightmare if there was that level of protection in specifically the copyright sense of "anything you take is all mine".
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u/NotCurryJump 9h ago
Mobile app stores too. The speed at which someone can push an ad-riddled copy to Google Play the moment a demo gets any traction is genuinely insane.
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u/Hakzource 13h ago
New rule of the internet: if it's a game, there's a roblox version of it (baring nintendo titles)
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u/DanleyDanderson 8h ago
Left! Left! LEFT! The co-op rally car game got cloned in Roblox before the game even released
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u/Blue_Alu05 14h ago
Fuck that's a shame, I was waiting for it since the idea of a buckshot roulette with alcohol sounds funny af
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u/Glittering_Recipe170 14h ago
I had a grand old time yesterday in the Discord server.. Come join in sometime! It's rare but people still play it on there. There is definitely BSR and alcohol lol
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u/smulfragPL 11h ago
which is why not releasing this demo for this reason sounds like bullshit. It's basically a variation of an arleady existing game
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u/APRengar 10h ago
If you're afraid of like, ripped assets and then flipping them onto an app store so everyone already has the unofficial version, they won't buy the official version, I can understand.
I released 2 Godot games on PC that are priced at $9.99 and $12.99, within 24 hrs there were Chinese mobile versions for $1. Seemingly have around 100k purchases, but I don't know how legit that number is. It's just the world we live in now.
Pukey having simple gameplay makes it more prone to getting ripped and flipped.
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u/DankMemethan 14h ago
I feel like this game in particular is carried by the presentation in such a manner that even if AI can make something mechanically identical, it wouldn't have any of the appeal.
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u/AnonD38 14h ago
But that's exactly why they fear releasing too many art assets.
You could just extract all the art assets from the demo, feed them into an AI and get something close enough to fool most who don't know it's AI generated.
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u/Practical_Entrance43 14h ago
Pretty much this. Like there are so many ai versions of Balatro (I still remember that crappy balala one) and I even recently saw one of Nubby's Number Factory.
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u/smulfragPL 11h ago
you can also easily do that with what we see from the trailer, you don't train ai models from scratch you just use refrence images
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u/AnonD38 11h ago
But it's a lot easier if you have the original assets instead of just screenshots.
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u/Klecktacular 12h ago
I'd like to think that original presentation would help it rise above its copycats but oftentimes being first trumps authenticity (hole.io over Donut County, 2048 over Threes, etc.)
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u/Dr__Pangloss 12h ago
insofar as the whole thing is an aesthetic experience, this kind of drama is part of the product
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u/Cley_Faye 6h ago
Do not underestimate the people that just don't care, whether it's because they don't know better, or because they just want cheap stuff.
People would buy a bad clone. And if your first experience with a concept is something that's completely half-assed, you're unlikely to try more, especially if "more" looks like what you just tried, even if only at a surface level.
The amount of people that will look if a game is a clone, an AI slopfest, or anything really, before buying, is not as high as you'd think by being around social websites based on people complaining about stuff. Most people just don't care.
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u/Alenonimo 13h ago
I understand the fear, but this seems to be just a Buckshot Roulette clone, but with anime girls.
Nothing wrong with that, but if someone really wanted to make a game ahead of them, they can still do it now. Maybe the fear is that someone can decompile the game and release it somewhere else? I've seen cases of someone doing this even after launch, so good luck I guess... :/
I liked the trailler for this game. The animation is really bouncy and fun, and it seems to be voiced and have good music. I'm definitely wishlisting it. :)
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u/A_Trash_Homosapien 13h ago
I couldn't tell you what this games about as I think I had a seizure watching their video on steam. They just rapidly jumped through random clips while constantly putting up new text to try to read.
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u/SpiritJuice 11h ago
I remember watching the trailer and getting a headache. Absolutely awful trailer for an otherwise neat looking game.
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u/Zechariah_B_ 7h ago
A part of this fear of which I have too is that people are now able to take the mechanics and features of a game easily and use it in their own game in hours due to the advancements of AI decomp projects which has been validated over the few weeks.
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u/PatrickGnarly 13h ago
Not a joke that shit happens
The worst thing that happened to me as a musician was sending somebody some songs and them uploading them for their own benefit.
I can’t do that anymore. It’s happened twice already.
I could only imagine if somebody took a snippet of one of my demos or something, and decided to just try and reimagined it with AI I would lose my mind.
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u/iwannabethisguy 6h ago
What are the odds we lose gaming on our own systmes because of this and the next gen or two is fully cloud gaming?
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u/Senior_Torte519 1h ago
That but only after the industry wide abandonement of demo testing with the consumer audiences.
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u/Expensive_Savings_42 4h ago
Then people will open source games they make using AI. Nobody will pay to be locked into a shitty service when they can make a near replica in two days.
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u/KeeperOfWind 3h ago
With what servers if Amazon and the rest owns everything along with it servers can set the terms of "no open source games"
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u/Deeppurp 2h ago
Let me introduce you to the world of homelab, on prem, and local computing
Literally what most of computing has been done on and will continue to be done on unless they somehow can convince all the vendors and board partners to only produce thin clients.
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u/Senior_Torte519 1h ago
Until someone finds a way to poison the hub. Implementing some backend server bullshit that allows them to pur malware into the software.
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u/JukaiKotan Steam Master Race!! 12h ago edited 9h ago
Understandable. I would do the same too.
AI and vibe coding are improving much faster than I thought they would. It's scary sometimes.
Edit: I want to reiterate on what makes this thing even scarier for me. Vibe coding for reverse engineering an app/game/console is one thing.
Vibe coding to make a missile for war is one of the scariest things about this "AI and Vibe coding" improvement :
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u/jerekhal 9h ago
It's hard for people to internalize how technological innovation is exponential, and certain technologies ramp that up even faster.
Anyone could see AI was going to eventually be a major issue for things like this but the speed of it just "feels" unreasonable. Like it defies logic and expectations because we cannot internalize just how quickly tech can shift the entire landscape, and that it's getting faster the more that tech advances.
Honestly it's surreal to watch.
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u/UnoriginalJ0k3r 10h ago edited 7h ago
Go check out [r/scapelikes](r/scapelikes) and you’ll see the leaps and bounds generative AI is making every day
ETA: to be clear, I don’t support that kind of shit.
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u/ComradeJohnS 10h ago
hope you’re excited for a non-digital future because nothing digital will ever be secure again in a few years.
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u/theaveragemillenial 7h ago
security through obscurity was never real security, you can have open source secure platform.....
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u/UnoriginalJ0k3r 7h ago
I definitely didn’t mean for my comment to sound like I was in support of AI, I was just pointing out how far AI has come in that regard.
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u/DMsDiablo 10h ago
idk why your getting downvoted your not wrong we are in the addage of "this tech is the worst it will ever be today" state of things every day it is going to get better and break the next "this can't do x"
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u/Solid_Guess_7154 11h ago
ffs I was so excited to play the demo, I guess I'll just have to wait until december
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u/thepitcherplant 13h ago
Valid concern for relatively simple games like this I guess. If the game isn't mechanically complex it'd probably be easy to make a vibecoded clone before the original is polished enough for a proper release.
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u/WofferFang 13h ago
This is gonna be more and more common. AI killed demos, thank you very much "the future".
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u/dgellow 13h ago
Not just demos. They are killing the indie software market as a whole
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u/APRengar 9h ago
I feel like we might be going back to almost a patron system.
I have 2 indie games out, and they were pretty much instantly cracked and converted into mobile ports and put on Chinese app stores. So you could realistically play my game for $1. But I simply put out a message being like "If you want to see more updates or games like this, please buy legit."
It kinda feels like it's going to be less about buying THIS game, which you can get for cheap or even free via piracy, but more about showing support for future games. Because if you enjoyed this game, you probably want more games from the creator of a game you enjoyed, and AI/people can't steal what hasn't been created yet.
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u/dgellow 9h ago
Yeah, that’s also what I’m currently thinking. And that sucks to be honest, that means shifting the effort even more to the community building/management. Which in itself isn’t bad but you basically become fully dependent on in instead of having a healthier balance between sales and marketing/community building
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u/SalemWolf 12h ago
No other dev I’ve found or heard of has had this fear and canceled a demo for this reason. Come on. This is such a weird level of fear that it feels more like a performative marketing strategy.
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u/StumpGrundt 12h ago
Because its a very new technology, give it a bit for more people to familiarise themselves with it and you'll probably see more devs being more careful with giving out demos/betas
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u/WofferFang 11h ago
There's already projects with closed betas. I feel like that's going to be more common too. Closed testing. Smaller sample size for criticism and bug fixing, yes, but a price many are willing to pay I'm sure.
Just looking for a possible solution in the end. It's not perfect, but yeah. It's something.
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u/WofferFang 11h ago
I wish your words ring true. I love supporting smaller devs and I know the struggle to even get your game to be noticed. So yeah.
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u/DeadlyYellow 10h ago
First I've heard of the game, so it's working. Not likely to translate to a sale though as I'll probably forget the moment I close the tab.
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u/Oscarman97 14h ago edited 14h ago
Such a shame, I've been super excited for this one and was looking forward to giving it a try
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u/StrongZeroSinger 9h ago
Cmon piracy has always existed
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u/RpiesSPIES 9h ago
Not the same
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u/StrongZeroSinger 6h ago
How? Genuinely, I dont get it
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u/RpiesSPIES 5h ago
Cloning (well, to the degree they can) game for resale before release vs acquiring game files for download post release
While the end result is 'people download and play game' they are innately different if you apply more than one brain cell.
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u/Temporary-Concept-81 2h ago
This is better than piracy, because you can steal it and make it better to boot.
The community pirated decomp in many cases will be better than the version of the game you have to pay money for.
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u/lampenpam 117 9h ago
The issue is that when they released their game, even interested customers might already have their fill
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u/workster 12h ago
Acting like a game called Drunken Goddess Reflux won't be a kind of slop in the first place.
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u/Pale_Entrepreneur_12 11h ago
Even if the gameplay is simple you can’t seriously try to claim the game is lazy slop if you have seen any marketing for it it’s well animated has a good theme song and has a unique and fitting environment for it
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u/Stesspela 10h ago
Also it's from the developer that made "needy streamer girl overdose". A game that got such a big hit that they made a anime about it. Sadly the anime didn't manage to capture the social critic of it properly.
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u/Xespria 8h ago
Anything that doesn't interest me is slop.
Obvious /s but slop has lost all meaning.
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u/Expensive_Savings_42 4h ago
Reddit is almost all lazy slop, ironic people complain about slop here.
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u/CyanRyan https://s.team/p/dhwd-whb 5h ago
Go play the shitty AI version that'll inevitably come out then. Maybe fuck off, too.
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u/puphopped 12h ago
There was a game I saw on TikTok called Dumbfire, which has since had multiple clones made of it, many of which have better presentation and gameplay than the original.
Without or without AI, this has been seen in indie gaming for ages. Even Piratesoftware's game is just a crude Undertale clone. Which one is more popular?
I said it then and I'll say it now: If your game is simple enough to be copied 1:1, it probably isn't a very good game.
I think the devs of this game are just seeking attention to be quite honest. Looking at the game's steam page tells you everything you need to know about creating an identical clone of it.
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u/Extinctcoffee 12h ago
Bro what is this take? Simple games can be good, you said it yourself, Undertale was a simple game, and if it was made today, AI would be able to replicate it easily, that does not mean that "it probably isn't a very good game"
I don't disagree that there are a lot of soulless slop games out there, though
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u/puphopped 6h ago
Undertale could be replicated by AI
No, it really couldn't. Unless you genuinely think it is an identical 1:1 copy of Earthbound. Where are the Deltarune clones? Why doesnt Toby Fox have to worry about this? Think.
Undertale is a programmatically simple game. Literally every other aspect of it isnt. If games were just an exe that you play and engage with mechanics alone, maybe i'd agree.
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u/AssociationLanky8456 12h ago
I haven't seen it verified, but supposedly this is a possibility according to information coming out, in which case I don't blame them for their caution.
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u/RatKingJosh 4h ago
I’m just a glup shitto making a random thing but I’m slow as hell cuz I’m just one guy. Call me paranoid, but I legit have this fear too.
Maybe it’s illogical but my worry is sharing stuff into the aether and some rando stumbles on it and decides to steal it and see traffic while I stay in obscurity.
Like I know I’m sounding dramatic but we live in crazy times so even the most fringe of fears isn’t so unbelievable anymore. Problem is, What’s the solution? You cant just not share your work, nobody will see it. And you can’t trust the industry or marketplace to discourage the negative behavior. It’s really damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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u/WhyTryGG 4h ago edited 4h ago
Why not just have two separate builds? One being the full game that you keep under wraps. Then another stripped back version with only the bare essentials for a functioning demo? That way AI isn’t getting the full game.
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u/MegaFercho22 13h ago
Please Don't Type Like This
Jokes aside, that's a completely valid fear; people are evil
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u/VestOfHolding 12h ago
Isn't that a normal way to type for the title of posts and articles?
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u/Clarity_Zero 11h ago
It really isn't. Youtube's idiotic way if doing things normalized it, but for the entire history of the English language up until that point, you only capitalized words that were actually important and/or unique in titles.
Words like "of" or "the" or "this" weren't capitalized unless they were at the beginning of the complete phrase. In other words, titles followed the same basic structural rules as any other sentence.
The "capitalize everything" trend is an extremely recent one.
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u/VestOfHolding 10h ago
I see where I wasn't specific enough. Yeah, OP capitalized a lot of small words that weren't needed. It was just an unfortunate example for the person that I was responding to, "Please Don't Type Like This" arguably would be formatted that way. Where Youtube has done more damage is randomly capitalizing entire words, IMO.
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u/NewsFromHell 8h ago
I am torn on this. On one hand, this paranoia is going to push the industry straight into cloud-only gaming, where we literally own nothing. People might argue that locking games to the cloud would tank sales, which is valid right now, but if every studio eventually makes new releases cloud-exclusive to protect their files, we won't have a choice. We will all be forced to stream new titles.
On the other hand, man, fuck these 25 different release stages anyway. First it is a demo, then pre-alpha, alpha, beta, Early Access, Early Access 0.5, and finally 1.0. Bro, we are not your QA team. Hire actual testers and finish your game properly. I am tired of this shit.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if this specific dev was going to do that, and generally demos are fine for trying things out. Still, between YouTube gameplay videos and Steam's 2-hour refund window, what is even the point of a standalone demo anymore?
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u/Far_Inspection4706 2h ago
Forcing everyone to cloud gaming is a good way to kill the industry overnight. To put it simply, cloud gaming sucks ass. I live in a modernized country with what could be considered above average internet speed and it still lags like crazy for me. If it was cloud based gaming or nothing for me, I would just find a different hobby. Fuck all that nonsense.
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u/Expensive_Savings_42 4h ago
Why go to a cloud game when AI is so good it can make it for me locally in two days?
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u/00raiser01 3h ago
It also makes the copyright and licensing argument from stop killing games to be right.
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u/xanditbb 8h ago
I agree with most of your messages, but don't talk bad about demos. They are one of the most consumer friendly practices in gaming if the demo is done correctly (glimpse into detailed mechanics of the game, long enough to form an opinion) and it's always a good thing to be able to try the game before deciding if it's for you
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 3h ago
Also, Not to sound too harsh, but if your whole game can be completely done in A.I, is it really that good of a game?
You don't see anybody making an A.I copy of Mario 64 or FF8.
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u/Qwertyham 8h ago
Steam is one the the most successful gaming store fronts ever. You don't own those games. As well as an overwhelming amount of sales for PlayStation being digital purchases. You don't own those games. The reality, outside of reddit, is that people don't care about "ownership". They just want to kick back and play a game
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u/CalligraphyCurls 4h ago
I think ownership isn’t so much the problem here as having the binary on your local machine, which AI has now been shown to be pretty good at being able to reverse engineer. With cloud gaming, you could solve that problem by not installing the binary on people’s devices.
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u/Kuroodo 12h ago
It's crazy I was talking about this type of stuff with someone just a few days ago.
While what AI can do and solve in such a short amount of time is cool, the consequences are scary. That we're going to start seeing changes in the industry as the industry as a whole reacts to this. That with consumer hardware becoming expensive, a cloud-locked environment like game streaming sounds/becomes more and more attractive and starts making a lot more sense for the market to transition to.
With jailbroken PS5s, I was thinking about something big was probably going to happen with GTA 6. Likely that we'd have a playable version of GTA 6 on PC this year, which will send shocks to the industry.
I don't see a good outcome here for anyone, and unfortunately the big companies only care about protecting their revenue, so most of the industry will likely shift in ways that hurts the consumer the most.
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u/TheMobyTheDuck 9h ago
Is this game so basic that releasing a demo means the ENTIRE GAME can be replicated?
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u/ZombieKilljoy 9h ago
Sad how much things AI can steal now that there are entire video games blended into one abomination with the recent vibe coding epidemic
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u/Drezus 13h ago
This says more about the quality of his game that is so inherently easy to “copy” with AI than the actual people trying it.
Unless you think people are just randomly, actively trying to “copy” the next Elder Scrolls in hopes to steal Bethesda's slice of the pie?
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u/Electronic-Touch-554 12h ago
I mean not really, a lot of these more simple indie games with neat ideas get ripped off a ton on launch. Hence why it makes sense that they'd try stop it.
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u/codev_ 14h ago
Just thinking out loud
If AI is “so good” at copying the game and the fear is around somebody else is making your exact game - let them waste the tokens
Name and shame them
And let me send you my money
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u/AdolventureNeverEnds 13h ago
The issue is that someone making "your game but shit" and releasing it before your game comes out can poison the well for you since people will try the shitty version and think its bad and due to that not end up buying the proper game once it comes out
Would not be an issue if people were smarter and more critical but thats unfortunately not the case
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u/Alenonimo 13h ago
They're not breaking any new ground here. Their game, based on what I saw on the trailler, is just Buckshot Roulette with anime girls. Unless I missed something, the gameplay is already present in tons of other slop games already.
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u/AdolventureNeverEnds 12h ago
Yes this game is very clearly and obviously a take on the Backshot Roulette genre of games but that doesnt deride the fact that its still something new and clearly unique on the genre since it wouldnt have the amount of pull it has otherwise
And the main point of why they said they are cancelling the demo is that they worry art assets/gameplay details would be used for training (And yes those are present in trailers too but a demo is a completely different beast with how much easier its to steal from)
But the main reason to try and prevent is that the artstyle is absolutely one of the main driving factors here and the Average Consumer will absolutely write this game off if they first see an AI copy of it thats bad and has bad reviews/isnt good when they try it
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u/flash_baxx https://s.team/p/kngf-tqc 14h ago
Knock-off products have existed long before AI. It's an inevitability for anything new that pops off.
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u/Applesimulator 14h ago
The speed at which they pop up though has changed a bit and the amount of copy too. Before the original creator had more time to consolidate is market share of the genre but now with clones appearing so fast you genuinely lose the first’s advantage
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u/Fenweekooo 13h ago
all this is going to do is force game streaming. we already didnt own the game, now we wont even be given any of the files.
Congrats we have fucked ourselvs over once again. Humans are great at that!
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u/GettingWreckedAllDay 13h ago
Your point? They still need to take steps to protect their work
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u/flash_baxx https://s.team/p/kngf-tqc 11h ago
Deliver a high quality and recognizable product, work on your rapport, and build brand loyalty. Every big name brand started somewhere.
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u/kinglokilord 14h ago
Valid fear.
Man demos have had a wild ride. They came they disappeared, they rebranded as betas, they actually came back as demos again, and now they’re going away again.