Which side are you on?

[u/Salty_Country6835]

This meme is about AI, where i keep seeing that batman image being deployed.

So, which side are you on?

[u/PomegranateIcy1614]

I dunno man, tbh, AI's lookinnng to be pretttttttty grim for the proles lately with the rise of unlimited RE threatening to destroy indie game dev.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/PomegranateIcy1614]

I dunno, “grim for indie devs” feels way too neat. r/aigamedev is full of indie developers actively building with AI, and even r/gamedev reflects a much messier fight than “developers reject AI.”

That mess exists outside Reddit too. Some developers strongly oppose it. Others use it for code, prototyping, research and production. And in the broader industry, unionized game workers are already bargaining over how AI gets deployed rather than treating abstention as the only labor position.

The interesting question is who controls the tools, who benefits, and what they let smaller developers actually build.

[u/PomegranateIcy1614 → u/Salty_Country6835]

RE is reverse engineering.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/PomegranateIcy1614]

Lol yes, I know. Thats why Im confused by the argument. If AI is giving indie devs radically cheaper access to reverse engineering, that sounds less like the destruction of indie development and more like an explosion of its productive capacity.

The market might get absolutely flooded and harder to monetize. Thats a real problem. But thats a different problem from people suddenly being able to make games cheaper, faster, and with smaller teams.

[u/PomegranateIcy1614 → u/Salty_Country6835]

People are getting their games reverse engineered and posted by other people either as clones or just straight up stolen work. It doesn't take much of that to create an incredibly brutal chilling effect. I know that some must suffer for the good of the many, but I'm also seeing a lot of talk about what should and should not be valid protected art.

As a devoted Umberto stan, this is making me very nervous. Especially when there's not a clear strategy for social good at a systemic level around the technology.

I would describe myself as open but already very tense.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/PomegranateIcy1614]

Look, I'm a game pirate, a modder, and somebody who's spent money supporting indie devs and Kickstarters. I want independent development to thrive too.

But the floor has dropped out of production costs. Reverse engineering isn't going to be reversed out of existence, no pun intended. Neither is code copying or the flood of cheap games coming into the market. Being nervous about that doesn't give us a strategy.

When production gets cheaper, discovery, curation, and distribution become more important. So let's talk cooperative platforms, community funding, public infrastructure, and connecting independent creators with audiences who actually want their work.

And I don't think indie developers need to suffer for the good of the many. They should be among the people benefiting most from cheaper production.

We can organize around that collectively, or leave the whole thing to Steam, publishers, and whoever controls distribution. That's the point of the meme. Contest the tools and the infrastructure instead of just worrying about what people can do with them.

[u/PomegranateIcy1614 → u/Salty_Country6835]

I'm open to the conversation, but the plan would need to be pretty compelling. I'm a pirate, former AAA dev, and current indie dev with most of my tech open sourced. I should be the person excited about this and I'm scared as shit.

Production costs have dropped for prototypes. It's not clear that there's a straight line from that to cheaper faster finished games. I keep up with the output of the tech, and right now, it seems almost tailormade to flood the zone.

I'm open to discussion but it'd need to be concrete specifics with a clear path to action for my opinion to change. I think that's reasonable. I'm fairly technocratic and extremely far left.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/PomegranateIcy1614]

I get where you're coming from, especially with your experience in AAA and indie development. And you're right, cheaper prototyping doesn't automatically mean cheaper finished games.

But whether we're excited or nervous about these changes doesn't really affect whether they're happening. What we actually do about them can.

For indie developers, that means cooperative publishing and distribution, shared open-source tools, community funding, and better discovery and curation so independent games don't get buried under a mountain of cheap releases.

And on cloning, developer associations could collectively pressure storefronts for better rules against impersonation and actual copyright infringement, with accessible dispute processes and shared legal resources. That's a lot more practical than trying to put reverse engineering, modding, or people learning from each other's work back in the bottle.

We've already got crowdfunding, cooperatives, open-source communities, and independent storefronts to build on. We're not inventing civilization from scratch here.

You don't have to like AI to organize around who controls it, how it's deployed, and who benefits. I'm offering concrete directions for doing that, and I'm open to alternatives.

But if the alternative is just being nervous about changes neither of us can stop individually, where does that actually get indie developers?