i know we’ve had our fun putting middle fingers up towards Adobe and the like, but these kinds of restrictions are needed to protect developers who aren’t insanely wealthy.
from the article, which i’m sure you all read:
And yet there are situations that merit some discussion, like the recent controversy about the Steam Next Fest being chock-full of AI slop copied from existing titles. That particular situation is getting particularly nasty, as game developers are reportedly being extorted under threat that their game demos will be cloned into complete games before they have a chance to finish and release the original.
Adding insult to injury, this is seemingly being done to small studios whose main priority is usually “having food,” rather than big publishers looking to microtransaction everything into a new yacht for shareholders.
But this is restricting the user, not protecting the developers.
Unscrupulous developers can rip off code using another model, including local ones that can make literally anything. Opt-in protections against doing something bad to someone else don’t work.
i mean, it’s better than literally nothing, right?
i’d like it if developers had access to a tool that makes it impossible for AI to decompile our programs, or if any government ever made legislation about AI so we could sue when someone else uses Ai to copy our IP, or if it was at all feasible for the average indie gamedev to afford a lawyer.
but none of that is the case right now, so all that indie devs can hope for at the moment is that the creators of other models follow Antrhopic’s lead here, or that they get sued into doing something like this.
note: i’m biased since i got my degree in gamedev earlier this year, and i personally dislike AI. i hope my perspective is still useful, though.
and if there’s a better solution, i’d genuinely like to hear it
I think it’s worse than nothing because it won’t stop unscrupulous users, but will hit legitimate developers.
Bias: senior dev, agree with Linus Torvalds on LLM use.
I don’t think copyright is a coherent idea, and we’re watching it reach its inevitable conclusion now. It would be better if we relied on government funding and/or crowdfunding.
While it’s a worry for sure, I don’t see such AI creations becoming the mainstream.
Why? Because just like software, game develip needs the inspiration, the creative spark.
Sure you can create a copy of an existing software… But it either doesn’t go anywhere (because why would someone want a sloppy copy of a copy of a copy?), or it pivots to actually serving needs that exist on the market.
In other words: an artist or developer with the inspiration, the genuine original idea, will create something actually enjoyable/useful, whereas a copycat will always just be that, someone who saw an idea and decided to copy it without adding anything to it.
i appreciate the optimism, and yes! original stuff is always better! but sadly it’s possible for consumers to either not care or simply not know if something was made/copied with AI.
let’s say, hypothetically, i make a free public demo for a game called “Glass Quest”. whoops, suddenly 5 evil devs have each made 20 clones of my game, and consumers don’t know if “Glass Adventure” is the original game, or if it’s “Glass Quests”, or maybe “Prism Quest”?
not every clone is perfect, but some are good enough to take wishlists and engagement away from the original demo.
then, somehow i make it through that, and put the full version on Steam for £10. a reasonable price, but not free. so if someone threw my game into Claude and uploaded it to Roblox, then a lot of people would play that instead just because they wouldn’t have to pay, or perhaps without ever knowing that the original Glass Quest was a Steam game.
i know people have been making free versions of paid games for a very long time, but not to this scale. and those were often labours of love, not… this.
so again. i’m glad something is being done to address it.
i know we’ve had our fun putting middle fingers up towards Adobe and the like, but these kinds of restrictions are needed to protect developers who aren’t insanely wealthy.
from the article, which i’m sure you all read:
But this is restricting the user, not protecting the developers.
Unscrupulous developers can rip off code using another model, including local ones that can make literally anything. Opt-in protections against doing something bad to someone else don’t work.
It’s like selling cars with Tullock spikes.
i mean, it’s better than literally nothing, right?
i’d like it if developers had access to a tool that makes it impossible for AI to decompile our programs, or if any government ever made legislation about AI so we could sue when someone else uses Ai to copy our IP, or if it was at all feasible for the average indie gamedev to afford a lawyer.
but none of that is the case right now, so all that indie devs can hope for at the moment is that the creators of other models follow Antrhopic’s lead here, or that they get sued into doing something like this.
note: i’m biased since i got my degree in gamedev earlier this year, and i personally dislike AI. i hope my perspective is still useful, though.
and if there’s a better solution, i’d genuinely like to hear it
I think it’s worse than nothing because it won’t stop unscrupulous users, but will hit legitimate developers.
Bias: senior dev, agree with Linus Torvalds on LLM use.
I don’t think copyright is a coherent idea, and we’re watching it reach its inevitable conclusion now. It would be better if we relied on government funding and/or crowdfunding.
While it’s a worry for sure, I don’t see such AI creations becoming the mainstream.
Why? Because just like software, game develip needs the inspiration, the creative spark.
Sure you can create a copy of an existing software… But it either doesn’t go anywhere (because why would someone want a sloppy copy of a copy of a copy?), or it pivots to actually serving needs that exist on the market.
In other words: an artist or developer with the inspiration, the genuine original idea, will create something actually enjoyable/useful, whereas a copycat will always just be that, someone who saw an idea and decided to copy it without adding anything to it.
i appreciate the optimism, and yes! original stuff is always better! but sadly it’s possible for consumers to either not care or simply not know if something was made/copied with AI.
let’s say, hypothetically, i make a free public demo for a game called “Glass Quest”. whoops, suddenly 5 evil devs have each made 20 clones of my game, and consumers don’t know if “Glass Adventure” is the original game, or if it’s “Glass Quests”, or maybe “Prism Quest”?
not every clone is perfect, but some are good enough to take wishlists and engagement away from the original demo.
then, somehow i make it through that, and put the full version on Steam for £10. a reasonable price, but not free. so if someone threw my game into Claude and uploaded it to Roblox, then a lot of people would play that instead just because they wouldn’t have to pay, or perhaps without ever knowing that the original Glass Quest was a Steam game.
this is only barely exaggerated, too. see: https://youtu.be/9PbVrrNKKwU
i know people have been making free versions of paid games for a very long time, but not to this scale. and those were often labours of love, not… this.
so again. i’m glad something is being done to address it.