An AI-generated copycat version of a work-in-progress indie game has generated a justifiable wave of outrage in Japan, as the ease with which the plagiarized game was generated has developers concerned about the future implications of sharing their projects online. In response, the creator, if you can technically call them one, of the rip-off has attempted to defend their plagiarized game as “revenge,” as the developer behind the original game had previously created a Palworld/Pokémon crossover game.
As spotted by Automaton, the original indie game the rip-off is based on is called Typing Room, and is being developed by a content creator named Kamaboko. Kamaboko has been working on Typing Room for roughly a month, and shared the first look at its development process in a YouTube video on February 26. The plagiarized version, also titled Typing Room, was uploaded to Unityroom by a user named “Kamaboko Kōsatsu Kōsatsu” on March 4. While the rip-off version is free-to-play, games hosted on Unityroom can be subsidised by ad revenue.
Kamaboko Kōsatsu Kōsatsu then posted a bizarre YouTube video, seemingly in response to an article on Note accusing them of plagiarism. In the video, they outright confirm that they AI-generated everything in their plagiarised version of Typing Room by using the original Kamaboko’s videos and published user manual as prompts, and that it only took them “two days” to pull it off. They also refer to Kamaboko as “lazy” for taking so long to produce games and state that their own AI slop version of Typing Room is completely justified, as Kamaboko had previously used official Palworld and Pokémon assets to create a mash-up fangame of his own.
Several Japanese indie devs in a thread on X voiced their concerns with the lax restrictions on AI-generated content on Unityroom, with many especially upset at the fact that the Typing Room rip-off has been allowed to remain on the platform. Some have even stated that they’re worried about uploading work-in-progress videos of their projects as a result. “I’ve come to feel nothing but despair,” replied indie dev Strawberry Sakura. “When you publicize a project at such a rapid stage like I did, or spend too much time on development, it ends up getting stolen like this, huh… I feel anger welling up toward those using generative AI.”
