If you’re making game there is a chance someone with some AI tool can just steal it and sell it before you even put out a demo, sad reality really :\ but is there something that can make game AI-proof even if someone knows idea and your execution (which is the mostly stealed when you start showing your game)? what are your thoughts?
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Not really, AI or not there’s no way to completely protect from reverse engineering or extracting assets etc., the project has to be run and the data has to be presented to the audio system or graphics etc. so it has to be available, all that’s needed is dumping the memory of the running process and extract it, it takes some work but not much, it’s also relatively easy to extract the encryption key from an exported project and just extract all the resources
The main protection you have is copyright
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The one way is to only have a viewer application you give to your users, and you stream your game from your server to the players, so the game files are never actually on their PC. This is obviously financial suicide but it is one of the very few good ways if you absolutely need to be sure nobody has access to your source code.
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Good point, indeed as long as you don’t actually give the end user the resources or the actual “game” then you can stop them accessing them
It would be economically indefensible of course as it’s far cheaper to just protect your assets with legal measures than running a large scale streaming service (unless you’re Sony I guess)
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There’s one other caveat which is that some assets can be protected by hardware DRM systems, but they are relatively specific, for example video and some 3D assets I believe, which can be protected by effectively encryption and then decryption on the GPU, similar to how DRM for DVDs etc. works
I’m not sure how widespread the use of that is though and it doesn’t work for cases where the asset data has to be available locally for CPU based processing, so it only covers certain asset types
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Of course there isn’t 100% AI-proof game (well unless everyone who plays it can’t ever use AI or you have a time machine :\ ) but still there must be some method to stop 90% of opportunists and tutorial followers who don’t have resources to copy your game, otherwise most games will have hard time in the future
To be clear prevention of ripping the assets or copying was never the main defence against people cloning your games etc., copyright law and the DMCA is and has been, AI hasn’t really changed that (other than making it faster and easier)
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I hope so too.
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I mean what kind of people or organisations stealing some indies games?
If someone really wants they can reconstruct look of it from video stream as well.
Idea protection seem impossible, rather improving quality focus.
The valve still sell their Half Life which was modded, in so many ways by Gary Mode.
it is true that you can fight with DMCA or copyright, but what if your game don’t exist yet? what if some team thanks to AI won’t copy it fully, oh no… it will use AI to make similar game that succeds and makes your game look like a clone or like worse option, of course you can fight against that but at some point if your game looks truly “good to copy” then you just win the battle but enemy regrouped and now you have 10 clones, not one
How would they do it if it doesn’t exist? And someone else making a game that’s similar to yours isn’t cloning or copying
If you post your ideas and drafts you’ll always risk someone taking inspiration from that, and unless they copy your assets that’s not something anyone can do anything about. Sure it’s rude and inappropriate but it’s not illegal or strictly wrong unless again they copy all you did and don’t do anything themselves
But I think that scenario is a bit extreme
by doesn’t exist i mean situation when your game is still developing and you just make devlogs or playtests, you can copystrike it sure, but you have one big problem - you’re slow and inefficient compared to people who clone, the entire problem with AI is that it don’t copy your game exacly, it can make game with similar gimmick, similar mechanics, similar artstyle yet not literal clone which isn’t prohibited by most countries because these are ideas, not private assets
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Is that happening at any real scale? Where they just copy the idea and make their own assets?
But that is only really changed with “AI” by them being able to do so faster, and it depends on how much you share. It’s always a risk to make your projects public
But also I think if someone scraping your idea and making a slop version with generated assets then how does that really matter, in what way can that really compete with your project? Sure it might compete with some of the market but if your game is good then it stands on its own
Similar it’s with Suno and music.
Does it stop real bands do live gigs or selling merchandise?
But also it helps bands to find fresh ideas, but industry was overrun before even AI.
Of course scale isn’t that big, but it still can hit you and ruin your game, it’s even scarier if you fight against something that’s not recognized as a threat to your project by others
AI is not slop always - it’s just multiplier, so someone can make actually better game aided by AI and create their own vision, that’s the real problem, being too slow because you usually work solo or with small team, not as real job but as a after-hour hobby, and if there is team who wants to use your demo to build full game faster it’s just sad, many devs work on their games for months and for it to be in vain for some machine?
If you are worried about people “stealing” your idea then I’d suggest not being public about the development, regardless if that is “AI” assisted or not
But IMO if your idea is good and your execution of it is good and the quality of the game is good then someone “stealing” your idea isn’t a real threat, the quality will be what attracts people
That’s not to say it doesn’t suck when people take something you make without credit or thanks
But ultimately we all borrow ideas and concepts, none of us have truly unique ideas (not to say that “AI” “borrows”, that’s a different question)
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I saw a video just yesterday where a dev cloned a non-Godot demo game on steam with AI in three different ways. He gave just one prompt to it each time and the results were extrodinarily good. (For this test he did have permission of the original game dev).
- Using the game name alone he just prompted "Make a clone of this game in Godot’.
- Giving the steam page for the game he said ‘Make a clone of this game in Godot using only the details on the steam page’.
- He downloaded the game and gave the downloaded game code to AI and said make a copy in Godot.
All three were playable and remarkably good. Strangely the first attempt was the best, but the third attempt had levels that were locked in the game available to play.
Interestingly, none were really of the polish and the quality of the original. But given that the game probably took at least a year to build (just guessing here) the 3 clones took from a few hours to a day to recreate. With a few more iterations on the cloned games, who knows how close it could have got.
So I think there is nothing you can do, except what @athousandships said. Cloning is just too easy.
It is interesting though that I heard dev studios were starting to pull demo games from steam or not releasing demos any more. How true this is I don’t know, but this may be the end of public game demos too. Clone it, change assets, alter some bits and bobs, hey presto, another slopfest game to sell.
EDIT: I finally refound the video:
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This is all to say that it’s absolutely a concern and I understand the worry, but I personally feel that if you make a project that’s good, with quality and effort and soul then it will shine through
If someone copies that idea then it depends on how they do it, and it sucks if someone sloppifies your idea for a quick buck, but I believe people will see quality and still support your project if that happens, and unless your project is a huge investment or you otherwise depend on the economic success of it I’d say to continue to develop in the open to get community engagement and feedback, that way you build an audience that will get your game and not the clone
But ultimately, regardless of the tools used to copy, it’s always a risk that someone else iterates on your idea, and it can suck, and it can be rude or inappropriate, and it suck if you put a lot of effort into something and someone snipes you, but ultimately we can’t lock down or own our ideas, and the same thing is a risk once the game is released
tl;dr; if you make your project high effort and quality and pour love into it it will stand on its own and people will come, no one can take that away and if you do this as a hobby or to share your vision then that will be there no matter clones or copies and it will be yours
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The real concern is that what power art and quality even holds if AI can equalize them? Some artist who want to clone your game can make better polish, no matter if you’re honest, but you’re not first? gimmicks? they aren’t even worth showing if it’s your game’s entire premise, what about mechanic based game? unless it’s physics engine written from scratch with optimization no one ever sees then it can be cloned in a day
AI is different because it’s 100x faster than you or even your team, you just leave your PC like it was macroing some roblox game and when you wake up you have your shiny clone
I don’t fear johny who followed tutorial on how to clone X game, i fear team of 3 johny’s who hunt for indie games then clone them and improve with their art and skill to make original look bad
How does it opening itself the games?
Is it some integrated agent working with Claude?