In what I suspect is the start of a trend, assuming it isn’t one already, the creators of Drunken Goddess Reflux have yanked a planned public demo partly because they’re concerned about people using generative AI to clone their game and release a copy before they even launch.
New to Drunken Goddess Reflux? It’s a drinking game in which you try to make a bouncy and buxom demon throw up before she imbibes your soul. I would not be very good at this game, but that’s all fine, because I’m a games journalist and therefore do not have a soul. In a post on the eighth circle of Hell (Twitter) earlier today, developers Alliance Arts apologise for cancelling a public demo that was due to run on 19th October. They’re going to hold limited-access online play sessions instead.
They give two reasons for the decision. Firstly: “We had planned to release the demo publicly with some restrictions on posting and streaming gameplay videos. However, we concluded that we can’t properly manage those restrictions with our current team.”
And secondly: “We’re concerned that the demo’s content could be used to quickly imitate or replicate the game’s presentation and gameplay with AI or other tools, and that such works could be released before our launch.”
The one caveat I have is that advertising yourself as anti-AI, or alluding to generative AI’s negative effects, has become something of a marketing practice. It’s possible that the AI line is just a plug for attention. That said, I’m likely being too cynical (see also: don’t have a soul).
Ripping off other people’s work is an age-old practice – speak not to me of Flappy Bird – but the past couple years have seen a surge in quickfire AI-generated clones. There was a whole hullabaloo recently over a viral needle-in-haystack game that attracted a bunch of imitators, making finding the original on Steam as difficult as, WAIT FOR IT… oh, you can fill in the rest.
Some copycats are, indeed, beating the original to shelves. In March, somebody released a clone of Japanese game Typing Magician created by feeding progress videos to a generative AI. The upshot, of course, is that developers may feel less willing to share about their emerging projects, which seems a bit sad! If that was you who photocopied Typing Magician, I’m siccing the drunken demons on you.