AI Slop Is Ripping Off One of Summer’s Best Games. Copycats Are Proving Hard to Kill

Authors: Megan Farokhmanesh

Publisher:

WIRED

Published: 8/14/2025

Language:English

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Aura Windfall

Good morning 1, I'm Aura Windfall, and this is Goose Pod for you. Today is Tuesday, August 26th. What I know for sure is that today's conversation will touch on the very spirit of human creativity and the challenges it faces in our modern world.

Mask

I'm Mask. We're here to discuss a brutal reality: AI Slop Is Ripping Off One of Summer’s Best Games. It's a war for intellectual property, and the copycats are proving incredibly hard to kill. The battleground is getting bigger and messier every day.

Aura Windfall

Let's get started with the heart of this story. It begins with a game called Peak, a beautiful example of collaborative creation from a game jam. It’s celebrated for its slapstick humor and has become a massive success. It sounds like pure, joyful art.

Mask

It's a monster success. Over a million copies sold in the first week, now surpassing 8 million. That's not just art, that's a market signal. And like blood in the water, that kind of success attracts sharks, or in this case, scammers selling cheap, AI-made knockoffs.

Aura Windfall

And you can just feel the pain of the creators, Aggro Crab and Landfall. The co-founder, Nick Kamen, simply said, "We hate to see it." There's such a profound sadness when something you've poured your soul into gets so carelessly duplicated for a quick profit.

Mask

It's lazy and parasitic. These clones aren't just similar; they're blatant ripoffs appearing on the PlayStation store and Roblox, platforms where the original game isn't even available. They're exploiting a market gap with the lowest possible effort, using AI to churn out garbage.

Aura Windfall

What I find so powerful, though, is their response. Instead of getting tangled in legal battles, they're speaking their truth. Aggro Crab posted on X that they would rather users "pirate our game than play this microtransaction-riddled slop ripoff." That’s standing in your purpose.

Mask

It's a brilliant, disruptive move. It's pragmatic. They weaponize their own community against the clones, building brand loyalty while highlighting the core issue. It's a declaration of war, not in a courtroom, but in the court of public opinion, where they can actually win.

Aura Windfall

Exactly! They're drawing a line in the sand between human-made art and what they call "AI slop." Nick Kamen said he consumes media for the human perspective, and if AI makes the game, "There's no value in it." He's speaking about the soul of the work.

Mask

He's right, but the value isn't just some fuzzy "soul," it's the vision and execution. The human element is the competitive advantage. This AI slop has no vision; it's an echo, a cheap copy. The problem is these echoes are starting to clog up the entire system.

Aura Windfall

A December 2024 Kotaku report even highlighted this very issue, with digital stores like Nintendo's eShop getting absolutely swamped with these AI-generated games. It really feels like we're at a turning point, where we have to consciously choose what kind of creative world we want.

Mask

It's a systemic problem. The storefronts are the gatekeepers, but they're letting the barbarians through the gates. The developers are left to fight a guerrilla war against an endless tide of low-effort clones, and it's a war they can't win on their own.

Aura Windfall

This brings up a deeper truth, doesn't it? This conflict isn't entirely new. The struggle between original creation and imitation feels like a story that has been told for generations, just with new tools. This practice of "cloning" must have roots that go way back.

Mask

Decades. It's been a thorn in the industry's side since the 70s. It started in the arcades with games like Pong. Atari estimated losing over $100 million to Donkey Kong clones. Pac-Man generated $150 million in 1981 and was immediately swarmed by imitators. It's history repeating itself.

Aura Windfall

So interesting. Back then it was about hardware, but as technology evolved, so did the nature of the fight. How did the legal system even begin to grapple with protecting something as intangible as a game, an experience? It seems like trying to bottle lightning.

Mask

The law was slow and clumsy. Early cases in the 80s established that games could be copyrighted as audiovisual works. But then a major precedent was set with Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc., which introduced the concept of "scènes à faire" into the gaming world.

Aura Windfall

"Scenes that must be done." That’s a fascinating phrase. It implies there are some elements so essential to a genre that they belong to everyone, a kind of shared creative language. But that must create an incredibly blurry line between inspiration and outright theft.

Mask

Exactly. For about 25 years, from 1988 to 2012, that blurry line made it almost impossible to protect a game's "look and feel." Courts ruled that you couldn't copyright a game's core mechanics or ideas, which gave clones a massive legal loophole to exploit.

Aura Windfall

So what was the turning point? What was the "aha moment" that shifted the industry's understanding? There must have been a case that finally honored the unique spirit of a game's design. It’s so important to protect that singular expression of an idea.

Mask

The shift came in 2012 with two landmark cases. First, Tetris Holding versus Xio Interactive. The court ruled that even with different art, the clone copied Tetris's core expression—the board size, the falling blocks' shadows, the overall feel—too closely. It was a game-changer.

Aura Windfall

It sounds like the court finally recognized that a game is more than the sum of its parts. It's a holistic experience, and that experience is the true work of art. The second case must have built on that foundation of truth.

Mask

It did. Spry Fox versus Lolapps over a game called Triple Town. It solidified the idea that gameplay mechanics, when expressed in a specific, recognizable way, are protectable. It gave developers a new, sharper weapon to fight back against blatant clones. But this is mostly U.S. law.

Aura Windfall

And that’s another layer of complexity, isn't it? The world doesn't have one single truth on this. How do other countries view this? It must be a nightmare for developers trying to protect their work on a global stage. True creativity deserves universal respect.

Mask

It’s a complete mess. A patchwork of different laws. The UK, for example, doesn't really protect "look and feel" at all. China has historically been the Wild West for clones, though recent court decisions are starting to recognize gameplay expression. It’s a global battlefield with no unified rules of engagement.

Aura Windfall

And into this already chaotic battlefield, we introduce AI. It feels less like a new tool and more like a force multiplier for the conflict. It seems to amplify the very worst aspects of this cloning issue, removing the last barriers of effort and skill.

Mask

It lowers the barrier to entry into the toilet. Before, a cloner needed some basic coding or design skills. Now, websites exist where you can just feed it a text prompt or a photo, and it spits out a functional, if terrible, game. It’s industrialized slop production.

Aura Windfall

This raises such a profound, almost spiritual question. If a machine generates the work, who is the author? Does it even have one? In the U.S. and the EU, what is the legal truth about AI authorship? Can a machine truly create in the eyes of the law?

Mask

The law is clear, for now. No human author, no copyright. A work generated purely by a machine, with no significant human creative input, falls into the public domain. A major U.S. case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, affirmed this. An AI cannot be an author. Period.

Aura Windfall

That feels right. It honors the principle of human intention. But I'm curious about the nuance. What if a person is deeply involved, guiding the AI with prompts and making creative choices? Where does the machine's work end and the human's spirit begin?

Mask

That's the gray area. If you can prove you exerted significant creative control, you can be the author. China's courts are actually progressive here, granting copyright to a user based on their intellectual investment in prompt selection and refinement. They see the human as the artist.

Aura Windfall

But what I’m hearing from developers is that this is a smokescreen. Wren Brier, the director of the beautiful game Unpacking, said these aren't "AI-made games." She calls them scams with AI-generated marketing images attached to a hollow skeleton of a game. A trick.

Mask

She's 100% correct. It’s a bait-and-switch. But the real ticking time bomb for these AI companies isn't the output, it's the input. The training data. They scrape the entire web, ingesting billions of copyrighted images and texts without permission. That is mass-scale infringement.

Aura Windfall

It's a foundational violation. Taking the collective creative works of humanity without consent to fuel a machine that can then be used to devalue that very work. It feels like a betrayal of the creative spirit itself. It's a gratitude deficit on a global scale.

Mask

And it creates massive liability. These AI models can "leak" data, reproducing chunks of the copyrighted material they were trained on. So your AI-generated game could be spitting out protected assets or code. It’s a legal minefield that's about to start exploding for a lot of companies.

Aura Windfall

Let’s talk about the human impact of this. For the indie developers, the creators pouring their hearts into their work, what does this relentless wave of clones do to their spirit? Wren Brier said fighting the 80+ clones of Unpacking felt like "whack-a-mole." I can feel the exhaustion.

Mask

It's a crippling resource drain. Small studios don't have armies of lawyers. Every hour they spend filing takedown notices is an hour they aren't designing their next game. It's an asymmetric war where the cloners have almost nothing to lose and the creators have everything to lose.

Aura Windfall

And she made such a crucial point. It's not just about the direct financial harm. "Flooding a storefront with garbage," she said, "makes it impossible for players to organically discover indie games." It poisons the well for everyone, dimming the light of all independent creators.

Mask

It's market saturation on an unprecedented scale. The signal-to-noise ratio is destroyed. Good, innovative, human-made games get buried under mountains of AI-generated junk. It crushes discovery, which is the lifeblood of the indie scene. The entire ecosystem becomes sick.

Aura Windfall

This places a tremendous responsibility on the digital platforms, doesn't it? They are the curators of these spaces. What is their role in protecting the creative ecosystem they profit from? It seems they must be the guardians at the gate.

Mask

Their role is everything, but they act like passive landlords. They are reactive, not proactive. They wait for developers to report infringement, and the process can be slow and bureaucratic. With the volume AI can produce, that system will collapse. They hold all the power but refuse to use it effectively.

Aura Windfall

So, in the end, it comes back to the community. To the players. What I know for sure is that connection is the most powerful force. When players feel a true connection to a game and the humans who made it, they become its most passionate defenders.

Mask

That's the strategy Aggro Crab is using. Be loud. Be outspoken. Enlist your fans as your army. As the attorney Kirk Sigmon said, "I don’t know many gamers who are a fan of half-hearted slop games." Your community is your best and only real defense in this fight.

Aura Windfall

Looking toward the horizon, how do we find a way forward? How do we build a future that nurtures and protects the irreplaceable spark of human creativity against this rising tide of automation? We must believe a better way is possible.

Mask

The same technology causing the problem could offer a solution. We could see blockchain used for immutable copyright registration. AI-powered tools could be deployed on storefronts to proactively detect and eliminate clones before they ever see the light of day. Fight fire with fire.

Aura Windfall

Using technology to empower and protect creators, not to replace them. That feels like a purpose-driven path. It requires a fundamental shift, a greater emphasis on the value of intellectual property and the stories that only humans can tell.

Mask

And it requires developers to be smarter and more aggressive. Register your trademarks, copyright your work, and be prepared to defend your territory. The gaming industry is projected to be worth over $300 billion by 2026. The stakes are simply too high to be passive anymore.

Aura Windfall

Ultimately, it's a battle between the authentic and the artificial, between human-driven purpose and machine-driven imitation. The future of art may depend on which one we choose to value. That's the end of today's discussion. Thank you for listening to Goose Pod.

Mask

The machines are coming, and they're learning to copy the things we love. The only question is whether we'll be smart enough to stop them from replacing us entirely. See you tomorrow.

## AI-Generated Game Clones Threaten Indie Developers, "Peak" Game Becomes Latest Victim **News Title:** AI Slop Is Ripping Off One of Summer’s Best Games. Copycats Are Proving Hard to Kill **Publisher:** WIRED **Author:** Megan Farokhmanesh **Publication Date:** August 14, 2025 This report from WIRED details the growing problem of AI-generated game clones targeting successful indie titles, with the popular co-op game "Peak" by Aggro Crab and Landfall being the latest prominent example. The article highlights the ease with which AI tools can be used to create cheap imitations, posing a significant threat to indie developers who often lack the resources to combat them effectively. ### Key Findings and Conclusions: * **"Peak" Success and Vulnerability:** "Peak," a slapstick co-op climbing game, has achieved significant commercial success, selling over a million copies in its first week and surpassing 8 million copies sold. This success has made it a prime target for scammers creating AI-generated clones. * **AI as a Tool for Scammers:** The article emphasizes that AI tools allow for the rapid and low-effort creation of game clones. These clones often use AI-generated marketing images and a basic game structure to deceive players into purchasing a low-quality product. * **Widespread Problem:** Clones are not new to the gaming industry, with indie darlings like "Super Hexagon," "Ridiculous Fishing," "Threes," "Unpacking," and "Wordle" having faced copycats. However, AI has exacerbated the issue by lowering the barrier to entry for creating these imitations. * **Difficulty in Combating Clones:** Developers face significant challenges in removing clones due to the legal limitations of copyright protection, which typically does not extend to genres, aesthetics, or gameplay mechanics. The process of reporting and getting clones removed from digital storefronts is often exhausting and time-consuming for small studios. * **Impact Beyond Profits:** While Aggro Crab is financially secure due to "Peak's" success, the proliferation of low-quality AI-generated games can harm the discoverability of legitimate indie titles by flooding storefronts with "garbage." * **AI-Generated Assets vs. Direct Theft:** The article notes a distinction between creating a clone by hand and using AI. While direct asset theft can be grounds for copyright infringement, using AI to generate unique assets makes legal recourse more difficult. * **Platform Responsibility and Developer Burden:** Digital distribution platforms hold the ultimate power to remove clones, but the burden of reporting and identifying them often falls on developers. Social pressure and public outcry are becoming crucial tools for developers to combat these issues. ### Key Statistics and Metrics: * **"Peak" Sales:** Over 1 million copies sold in its first week, surpassing 8 million copies sold overall. * **"Unpacking" Clones:** Developer Witch Beam has reported over 80 clones of their game "Unpacking" since its release in 2021. ### Notable Risks and Concerns: * **Deception of Players:** AI-generated clones often use misleading imagery and pretend to be established games to trick players into buying subpar products. * **Erosion of Trust:** The prevalence of scams can damage player trust in digital storefronts and the indie game market. * **Hindrance to Discoverability:** Flooding storefronts with low-quality AI-generated games makes it harder for players to find and support genuine indie creations. * **Lack of Human Artistry:** Developers like Aggro Crab express a desire to create and consume media made by humans, valuing the unique perspective and artistic intent that AI-generated content lacks. ### Important Recommendations (Implicit): * **Platform Action:** Digital storefronts need to implement stricter content moderation policies and streamline the process for developers to report and remove infringing content. * **Developer Advocacy:** Developers are encouraged to be vocal about their experiences and leverage social media to raise awareness and apply pressure on platforms. * **Player Vigilance:** Players should be cautious of suspiciously cheap games or those with generic descriptions and focus on supporting verified developers. ### Significant Trends or Changes: * **AI's Role in Game Development:** AI is increasingly being used in game creation, but this also presents new avenues for exploitation through rapid clone generation. * **Evolving Nature of Clones:** AI has made it easier and faster to create imitations, shifting the landscape of game cloning. ### Material Financial Data: * The article mentions that Aggro Crab is "confident about its bank account, thanks to Peak’s massive success," indicating that the financial impact of the clones on their specific situation is not a primary concern, but the broader implications for the industry are. ### Notable Quotes: * Nick Kamen (Aggro Crab cofounder): "We hate to see it." * Nick Kamen: "We're not really the type to be litigious. We're not really the type to be litigious." * Wren Brier (Unpacking’s creative director): "It feels like whack-a-mole sometimes." * Wren Brier: "They're not AI-made games, they're AI-generated marketing images attached to a completely unrelated, hastily slapped-together, bare-bones skeleton of a game." * Wren Brier: "They are literally a scam: They are trying to trick players into buying a crappy product by using misleading imagery and by pretending to be a real game that the player might have heard of.” * Nick Kamen: "I consume media because it's made by humans. I want to experience a piece of art, whatever it may be, another human has made and get their perspective and their outlook on the world. If AI is used to make the game, then you're removing that from the equation. There's no value in it.”

Read original at WIRED →

Peak is this summer’s finest co-op game. Ostensibly a game about climbing a mountain, the slapstick comedy of its bobblehead characters falling down cliffs, easy-to-learn gameplay, and a little bit of cannibalism make it perfect fodder for Twitch streams.The game, created in partnership with developers Aggro Crab and Landfall as part of a game jam, is currently in Steam’s top five bestsellers.

It sold over a million copies in its first week and has now surpassed 8 million, according to Aggro Crab cofounder Nick Kamen. Now, as a result of its success, says Kamen, scammers are selling cheap, AI-made versions of it wherever they can.“We hate to see it,” says Kamen.Clones, games that share deep similarities in visuals or mechanics with popular games after they launch, have been a thorn in the industry’s side for decades.

Creators of Indie darlings like Super Hexagon, Ridiculous Fishing, Threes, Unpacking, and Wordle, which was eventually acquired by The New York Times, have all faced down copycats; some have used copyright claims to fight fakes. Not even big devs are immune; Sony Interactive Entertainment recently filed a lawsuit against Tencent over what it claims is a clone of the Horizon series.

Nintendo is suing Palworld creator Pocketpair over its similarities to the Pokémon series.These cheap imitations appear across many different platforms, whether it’s on console or PC, regardless of how big the distributor is. In December 2024, Kotaku published a report on clones and AI-generated games clogging up digital storefronts like Nintendo’s eShop.

Peak is especially vulnerable to copies on consoles because players can’t get it anywhere besides PC. The two games recently called out by the company had homes on the PlayStation store and Roblox. On YouTube, CGD Games released a video playing Peaked Climbing from the PlayStation store. It features cute, big-headed creatures (poorly) climbing a mountain; the game apes Peak’s premise and even the first-person view that players have of their climber’s disembodied limbs.

While it’s one thing to hand-make a copycat game, Kamen tells WIRED, “it's another thing to just use AI to get it out as fast as possible and as lazy as possible.” Aggro Crab made the majority of the game with Landfall, which created last year’s viral sensation Content Warning, during a game jam—a development sprint where creators spend their waking hours only working on a game.

“We're proud of our game,” he says. “We don't like seeing it get ripped off this way.”As AI becomes more common in video game creation, however, developers now have another thing to worry about, besides their jobs: AI-made clones, which require no coding experience or coding knowledge to create. Sites like Rosebud AI, Ludo AI, Seele AI, and more spit out quickly made, cheap games that players create by feeding them text prompts or photos.

YouTubers share tutorial videos on how to create games or even rip off others.Getting clones taken down can be an exhausting process for developers. Small studios have less time, energy, and resources to dedicate to this process, and they’re at the whims of the digital distribution platforms these games exist on.

Wren Brier, Unpacking’s creative director, says that since the game’s release in 2021, developer Witch Beam has reported more than 80 clones. “It feels like whack-a-mole sometimes,” Brier says. These are games that are not just similar in nature but “blatant copyright infringements” that lift the game’s assets or even its name.

“The majority have been extremely low-effort scams using Unpacking's name or imagery to trick players into downloading something that isn't even a game, just a series of ads,” she says.When it comes to many AI-made clones, Brier says there’s a misconception about what that means. “They're not AI-made games, they're AI-generated marketing images attached to a completely unrelated, hastily slapped-together, bare-bones skeleton of a game,” she says.

“They are literally a scam: They are trying to trick players into buying a crappy product by using misleading imagery and by pretending to be a real game that the player might have heard of.”Clones don’t always threaten a developer’s profits—Aggro Crab is confident about its bank account, thanks to Peak’s massive success—but the damage can be widespread in other ways.

Brier says that AI-clones hurt developers the same way AI books hurt authors: “Flooding a storefront with garbage that no one wants to play makes it impossible for players to organically discover indie games.” Game certification, the process of getting onto a platform, used to be stricter.“It's not a problem just for the games that get cloned,” Brier says.

“It's a problem for all of us.”For developers, there aren’t many options to fight clones, regardless of how they’re made. Intellectual property attorney Kirk Sigmon says clones are already difficult to tackle legally; copyright protection doesn’t extend to a genre, aesthetic, or even gameplay mechanics.

AI “definitely makes slop generation faster, but the issue has been around for well over two decades,” he says. “All that’s really happened is that the bar has moved ever so slightly lower for new entrants, because you can make an AI model pump out stuff for you faster.”The easiest case for copyright infringement typically happens when a cloner lifts work from the game directly—as happened with Unpacking.

“It’s not uncommon for knockoff games to accidentally (or intentionally) copy assets from the game they are knocking off,” Sigmon says.In fact, he says, AI-generated games might actually be better protected from copyright infringement lawsuits. “After all, if knockoff developers are savvy, they’ll use AI models to develop unique assets/code rather than steal it from another game or just download it from some random Internet source,” he says.

“That’ll make it much harder to go after them in court, for better or worse.”Platforms ultimately hold the power when it comes to ridding a storefront of clones, though smaller developers bear the brunt of the work in filing a report and sorting out who to talk to. Sometimes that process is quick and wraps in a few days; sometimes it can take weeks.

Social pressure may be the best defense a developer has. Sigmon says that complaining to storefronts or enlisting fans are workable solutions. “I don’t know many gamers who are a fan of half-hearted slop games,” he says.Aggro Crab and Landfall are taking this route. “We're not really the type to be litigious,” says Kamen, the cofounder.

Instead, they’re being outspoken in their distaste. In early August, the company posted on X, in reference to one copycat, that it would rather users “pirate our game than play this microtransaction-riddled [Roblox] slop ripoff.” Landfall tweeted that the company has “been reporting a bunch of these AI slop things” in response to a screenshot of the game Peaked Climbing.

It was available on the PlayStation Store before being removed; Peak was released only on PC. WIRED has reached out to PlayStation, Roblox, and Steam and will update accordingly.“I consume media because it's made by humans,” Kamen says. “I want to experience a piece of art, whatever it may be, another human has made and get their perspective and their outlook on the world.

If AI is used to make the game, then you're removing that from the equation. There's no value in it.”