Indie Studio Cancels Public Demo Over AI Clone Fears

Spanish studio Digital Sun Games canceled the public playtest for its roguelike ReVamp due to fears of code theft and rapid cloning, driven by the release of Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 AI model. The decision stems from a surge in cheap clones flooding Steam and Roblox. The studio will instead host a private Discord playtest for a few hundred users, down from tens of thousands of Steam signups, requiring NDAs and manual vetting. Marketing manager Israel Mallén cited risks of decompilation and opportunistic clones shipping before ReVamp's March 2027 launch, impacting feedback and visibility. Digital Sun, known for Moonlighter, said this is a new concern after a decade without such worries, calling the situation "broken." They urge platforms to implement better vetting tools, warning that without protections, public demos will become rare and shift to launch-time marketing, harming indie developers.