Indie developers cancel demos over AI cloning as Steam Next Fest fills with AI-generated games
2026-10-19 | ESP | incident | economic, reputational
Our take
Indie developers are pulling demos so nobody can clone them. Meanwhile Next Fest filled up with games that look cloned anyway.
The facts
Indie game developers, including Alliance Arts, are canceling public demos after AI tools rapidly cloned their games, leading to intellectual property theft and extortion. Simultaneously, Steam Next Fest is overwhelmed by low-quality, AI-generated game demos, degrading the event's quality and harming the developer and player community.