Indie Dev Says AI Clone Was Made And Used As Ransom Threat
The reported tactic turns a clone from a copyright nuisance into a paid threat against small developers who have few resources to fight a Steam release, and it has already changed what at least one Japanese studio is willing to show publicly about a game that is still in crowdfunding.
Key Facts
- Weasel Pit, developer of the roguelite game Iron Pilgrim, reported that someone recreated the game with AI and demanded $200 worth of Steam items within 24 hours to cancel a clone release.
- Psicodart Games, developer of the roguelike action game Circusar, reported receiving the same demands from Zagir Harif as Weasel Pit.
- tomo-mana, co-representative of GREENHORN, said the studio will hold back the twice-weekly progress posts it had been making for its deck-building roguelite RPG Project Solaris.
- Project Solaris, which stars a dropout witch and a homunculus, is running a crowdfunding campaign and aims to add partial voice acting and additional scenarios.
Reporting from 2 sources: GameBusiness.jp, Game Spark.
Weasel Pit, the developer of the roguelite game Iron Pilgrim, reported that someone recreated the game with AI and threatened to publish a clone on Steam unless Weasel Pit paid $200 worth of Steam items within 24 hours. Weasel Pit said it believes the clone was made from footage posted on social media and indicated it would not pay. InTheIndie, an outlet that covered the matter, noted that Weasel Pit had previously told another developer on Reddit that if that developer released a game on Steam, Weasel Pit would publish a free version, and questioned whether the victim report might be a self-staged publicity stunt. Weasel Pit admitted fault over the Reddit comments and said it intended to apologize, but disputed the stunt claim, saying similar emails had gone to other developers. Psicodart Games, the developer of Circusar, also reported receiving the same demands from Zagir Harif. In Japan, tomo-mana, co-representative of GREENHORN, said the studio will hold back the progress posts it had been making twice a week for its game Project Solaris.
GREENHORN co-representative tomo-mana tied the pullback to the studio's own limitations rather than to the threat alone. "I thought it would be better to hold back on progress until I can be confident that it would be difficult for someone to rip it off even if I reported progress," tomo-mana said, citing the team's development speed and the difficulty of analyzing what Project Solaris needs.
The ransom email itself asked for $200 worth of Steam items within 24 hours, with the release called off if the payment arrived. The same sender, Zagir Harif, is named in demands sent to Psicodart Games over the roguelike action game Circusar.
The cluster does not treat the two cases as isolated. Game Spark and GameBusiness.jp both place the demands against a run of clone releases on Steam, citing a rip-off that copied the title of Meccha Chameleon in full and a later wave of follower works built on the same idea.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.