Creators of Needle In A Haystack Clone Claim Their Game Has Been Imitated by Vibe-Coder

This situation is about to get pretty tangled, so let’s break it down: the developers of Needle In A Haystack, a clone of the viral game Needle In A Haystack Simulator, have accused the creators of another clone, A Game About Needle In A Haystack, of copying their code. They claim that this second clone features identical error messages to their game, “word for word.”

Just typing that out is a bit of a brain-buster, so let’s rewind. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen clones of Studio Bitdot’s hit, Needle In A Haystack Simulator. After clips of the game went viral on social media in August, Steam users quickly noticed a surge of similarly titled games, like A Needle In a Haystack and Story of The Needle In a Haystack, popping up seemingly overnight.

Currently, there are at least fourteen clones of Studio Bitdot’s original game on Steam. One of these is Needle In A Haystack from studio NoGlyph, which launched on September 29. It’s worth noting that NoGlyph’s game doesn’t seem to share any thematic elements with the original and lacks any AI disclaimers on its Steam page.

Yesterday, on October 17, NoGlyph accused another clone, Little Field Studios’ A Game About Needle In A Haystack, which was released just a day earlier, of copying their code. In a post on Steam, NoGlyph stated, “When we looked through [A Game About Needle In A Haystack’s] files, we found 13 of our classes inside it with the exact same names. More than half of the functions in that part match ours exactly. Some of our own error messages are still in there word for word, including one that points to a shader from our project that doesn’t exist in their game.”

While NoGlyph’s post doesn’t explicitly label Little Field Studios’ game as a low-effort clone, a comment from their lead developer, Jahvin, on NoGlyph’s Discord confirmed the extent of the code duplication. Jahvin noted that Little Field Studios’ game contains 39 “same-named methods” that are “byte-for-byte identical.”

What Jahvin describes is a classic sign of AI-assisted decompilation: taking a closed-source game, using AI to make its source code readable, and then copying that code into your own project (or likely having the AI do it for you).

This situation is genuinely concerning. The implications of decompiling and game cloning are becoming a significant issue in the indie scene.

Everything is becoming open-sourced, and it’s alarmingly easy to steal ideas in a day. The indie community isn’t prepared for this, and it could lead to serious problems.

While Steam users seem to lack sympathy, with some calling it “karma” for NoGlyph’s attempts to capitalize on Studio Bitdot’s original game, the potential for AI-driven cloning raises broader concerns in the indie game landscape.

As noted in a recent article, a Roblox creator cloned the upcoming indie game Escape the Walls within 24 hours of its reveal, simply by using a single video. This creator even boasted about how they accomplished it: “Claude did everything for me; I just sat in my chair and watched.”

Similarly, the developers of Drunken Goddess Reflux, Alliance Arts, decided to cancel their demo release on Steam. Their concern? That “works imitating or replicating this game’s presentation and gameplay could be quickly produced using AI” if they released their demo before the full game.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the new reality for indie games. Unlike major AAA publishers, indie developers often lack the resources to legally challenge every vibe-coded clone that surfaces, which may lead to fewer demos, early access titles, and trailers for indie games in the near future.