Moonlighter Dev Skips Public Playtest to Dodge AI Clones

Ever wonder if sharing your game early could backfire? For Digital Sun Games, the studio behind Moonlighter, that fear is now reality. They've decided to cancel a public playtest for their next game, ReVamp, because they're worried it'll be reverse-engineered, cloned, and published before the game even launches.

The announcement comes as a surge in rapidly vibe-coded clones floods Steam, Roblox, and mobile app stores, especially after the release of Claude Opus 5.5. "With launch still months away, sharing a build with tens of thousands of players feels like too big a risk," Digital Sun's marketing manager Israel Mallén told PC Gamer. The game in question, ReVamp, is a "tower defensevania" roguelike due out in March 2027.

Digital Sun was blunt in its public statement: "We've been concerned by recent news of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out. With launch still months away, a large public build of ReVamp felt like too big a risk." They also noted, "We know we're not the only developers feeling this way, and the more this is talked about, the more likely platforms are to step in."

They're not alone. Last week, the studio behind Drunken Goddess Reflux canceled its public demo for Steam Next Fest for similar reasons. A spokesperson said they feared 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 launch.

Claude Opus 5.5 has proven hugely disruptive. It's aided several high-profile game decompiles, helped jailbreak the PS5, led Xbox to announce its own AI-centric Xbox Labs, and made developing quickfire clones extremely easy. That's likely why this month's Steam Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, up from around 4,000 in June.

The speed at which clones can now be turned around is mind-boggling. When the creator of incremental punching game Escape the Walls published footage on X, it took only ten days for at least seven clones to appear on Roblox and at least one on Steam. That's the new reality indie devs are facing.

So what do you think? Will you be picking up ReVamp when it launches in 2027, or are you worried about the clone invasion? Let us know in the comments!