We’re keeping ReVamp’s first playtest small for now.Here’s why.
— Digital Sun - Wishlist ReVamp! (@digitalsungames.com) 2026-10-19T13:05:02.605862318Z
ReVamp developer cancels public playtest in case AI users reverse engineer it and publish a clone first
“With launch still months away, a large public build felt like too big a risk”
An indie studio has cancelled its plans for a public playtest of its next game because it’s worried it could be stolen by AI.
Digital Sun – which is based in Valencia, Spain and has released such titles as Moonlighter, Cataclismo and The Mageseeker – had planned to hold a public playtest of its next game ReVamp on Steam.
It’s now posted an announcement on its social media accounts, however, stating that its public playtest will no longer take place.
According the studio, the recent slew of people using AI tools to quickly decompile games and and port them to other systems has the studio worried that the same will happen to its game.
Its fear is that someone will download the public playtest, use AI to create a clone of it, and start selling that clone before the studio has time to put the finishing touches to its game and release it.
“So many of you signed up for ReVamp’s first playtest on Steam (thank you), but we’ve decided to start with something more contained on our Discord, with the public playtest coming a bit later,” it wrote.
“Why? We’ve been concerned by recent news of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out. With launch still months away, a large public build of ReVamp felt like too big a risk.
“To everyone who requested access on Steam – we’re sorry for the change of plans. We hope to open the public playtest around January. If you’d still like a chance to play this year, our Discord playtest starts October 29.
“Showing games early is how indies get seen and find the fans who keep us going, so we hope platforms keep strengthening protections for original work. Thank you for your support.”
Recently it was announced that Decomp.dev, one of the biggest sites dedicated to video game decompilations, was ‘sunsetting’ due (among other things) to the growth in the number of “bad actors” hijacking in-development projects and using AI to release them early.
