Studio At Home Rejects $200 Ransom Demand Over AI Clone Threat
The extortion attempt targets a small SRPG series with over 35,000 cumulative downloads, and Mochibe's refusal is a concrete case of an indie developer treating an AI clone threat as bluff rather than leverage.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Takashi Mochibe of Studio At Home, developer of the Steam SRPG Dragon's Chronicles, said on social media that he received an email demanding $200 in Steam items within 24 hours or the sender would release an AI-made clone first. Mochibe replied that he would buy a better copy for $200, judged the email likely spam, and urged other developers to be careful.
The email claimed the sender had used AI tools to reproduce a similar game and was ready to put it on Steam. It gave a 24-hour window, demanded $200 worth of Steam items, and said there was no room for negotiation. The proof video the sender said was attached was not there.
Mochibe's answer was to call the bluff. He wrote that if someone really copied the game and made a more fun SRPG, he would buy it for $200. He also read the message as likely indiscriminate spam, and asked other developers to stay alert in case. The threat has a pattern behind it: in Japan, tomo-mana, working on Project Solaris, said they would stop posting progress updates twice a week to guard against such messages.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.