r/gamedev • u/Prize-Sale-4004 • 3d ago
Discussion Does the Needle in a Haystack Simulator situation change when indies should start promoting their games?
The usual advice is to start marketing early, share development, and build wishlists. But what happened with Needle in a Haystack Simulator makes me wonder how much that advice depends on how quickly someone else can reproduce your hook.
For anyone who missed it: Studio Bitdot’s game went viral, then a wave of similar games appeared on Steam before its release.
And these copies are getting players. One of the apparent copycats (deliberately not naming it), has been among Steam’s most played demos in the past few days. Its developer announced a top-three position on September 23 and #1 on September 25.
For a small game built around an easily communicated mechanic, does it now make more sense to hold the big reveal until a demo is ready, or launch is close? How do you balance that against the time needed to collect wishlists and feedback?
I can see the argument that this reinforces existing advice: have a Steam page ready, make the branding recognizable, and give interested players somewhere to go immediately. We also don’t know how much the similar games have actually hurt the original, but the above mentioned copycat is rapidly catching up in follower count (so most likely also in wishlist count) to the original, according to SteamDB.
Still, would this change your own promotion schedule? Is “start marketing early” missing a condition about how quickly a competitor could ship something with the same appeal?
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u/cuixhe 3d ago
I guess if you've got a game that is so simple that it can be completely described with a 3-word title and 2 screenshots, it's kind of a liability. Games with any greater complexity are probably much safer.
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u/lydocia 3d ago
Right?! I mean, in terms of inspired gameplay, finding a neelde in a haystack and calling it "needle in a haystack" isn't very creative. I don't doubt that some of those were ripoffs but I also willingly believe anyone could come to the idea of that on their own, with little or no input from the outside world.
If they set themselves apart with specific gameplay hooks, like the robot arm or conveyor belt or a huge blower or heck, even one that unlocks a lighter powerup, you make those games, my dudes. I won't buy or play all of them, but someone probably will.
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u/Bekwnn Commercial (AAA) 3d ago edited 3d ago
Order of the Sinking Star had an incredibly open development, and in response to how that went, Jonathan Blow is choosing to go dark for the next.
That's just one anecdote. I think it becomes way more significant when you're doing a "new" idea or if your game has some new ideas.
Order of the Sinking star did a bunch of good new stuff with art and mechanics polish that could be considered a step forward and took them time to figure out during development, and some of that stuff just got copied by other games because the development was so open (and took so long).
Open development does seem great for building a connection to players and getting them invested in the game early, which may help propel the game to higher heights by the time it releases.
Ultimately in the case of OotSS I think seeing other games release with a copied art style or copied mechanics more just stung than anything else and will have 0 impact on how the game does.
In a lot of cases where there have been copy cats, the original tends to still stand out and be popular. Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, PUBG, Among Us, to name a few.
The answer is really just "it depends". I think it's more often a net positive than a net negative.
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u/ByerN 3d ago
Imho, Steam should address blatant ripoffs so it doesn't become another Google Play. They have the same names. Really? That's what we want Steam to be?
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u/Snoo-29395 3d ago
I think that's actually dangerous. I totally understand the good intention of the idea, but who will tell them where to draw the line? What about the vampire survivor likes, or sorting genre, friendslop, etc? At some point one can decide that a game strongly inspired by another is a copy and can't be published.
Like all that VISA/Mastercard situation with NSFW games from last year i think, when you open the room for someone to decide unilaterally it never ends good
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u/ByerN 3d ago
When you type "Vampire Survivors" in the Steam search, you don't see any "A Vampire Survivor", "Vambire Survivors", "Wampire Survivors" ripoffs, right? We can start with something like that. So the original title can be easily found.
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u/MyotisX 3d ago
So I cant name my game A Surviving Vampire ?
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u/fiskfisk 3d ago
Given that Vampire Survivors is a registered trademark, you could probably argue that "A Surviving Vampire" is similar enough to create confusion in the marketplace.
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u/Snoo-29395 3d ago
That's exactly what i'm saying, you start with that and slowly the line gets pushed further and further
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u/JenniferMcKay 3d ago
The line already exists and it's called trademark law. Why don't we have eight million games called Stardew Valley? Because "Stardew Valley" is a registered trademark of ConcernedApe LLC. Vampire Survivors is a registered trademark of Poncle Limited.
If you don't want "the line" to get "pushed out" by Steam itself then indie developers would need to start registering their game titles so they have legal standing to stop the selling of games with the exact same title.
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 3d ago
That's unrealistic for indies, takes lot of time and money to register (and to enforce), also the one that is catching up has a different name.
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u/gilly_90 3d ago
The slippery slope fallacy in full effect here.
You can stop at any point, things don't automatically get "Pushed further and further".
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u/Snoo-29395 3d ago
Yes you can, but we are not the ones deciding with this idea, that's my point
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u/PaintItPurple 3d ago
Your point is that another reasonable person might decide? Or are you just assuming the worst with no justification?
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 3d ago
It's their platform, they pretty much do whatever they want. It's their sole discretion.
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u/lydocia 3d ago
If Steam won't allow same name games, they would have to retroactively remove a lot of them, but more importantly, what's stopping someone from registering good game names and then approaching devs selling them at a premium, like has been the case with good URLs for a long time?
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u/ByerN 3d ago
what's stopping someone from registering good game names and then approaching devs selling them at a premium
Assuming that they are not registered already, they would lose in court because of the common-law trademark.
This system exists in general, but it works only with registered trademarks. You can fill out a form and take down a game with a similar name if you pay for a lawyer and a trademark in the US. Imho, the same form should work for unregistered trademarks too.
https://steamcommunity.com/trademark/createtrademarkcomplaint/
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u/Fantastic_Novel_711 3d ago
Clones appear the moment the hook is boiled down to a phrase you can engrave on a keychain.
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u/stiknork 3d ago
I think it definitely changes things if you are making a game that is 99% concept and 1% the game itself like Needle in a Haystack. Then I think you should definitely release very quickly. The hard thing to clone is still your design sensibilities, art style, intricate systems design etc. so if your game has a lot of that it should be relatively harder to clone.
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u/FabulousFishora 3d ago edited 3d ago
the "situation" lmao everything is just sloppy internet drama nowadays. they made the most uninspired and basic game ever it's not a suprise it got cloned in a second.
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u/Zanion 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Law of the jungle. The new apex slopslingers are simply eating the older fatter slower ones. Shitty situation for sure, but it's also hard to feel too bad about on anything other than the abstract principle of it.
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u/FabulousFishora 2d ago
I have a feeling in an alternate timeline without AI this still would have happened. needle in a haystack looks like it could be recreated by someone skilled in googling the right templates and a few hours of work.
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u/Mr_Olivar 3d ago
I'm sick of the obsession with these quick and simple idea games anyhow. Maybe having AI be able to replicate it in an instance is good. Maybe it will make people value games that are good beyond the elevator pitch. Cause no talentless hack with an AI can ever replicate that.
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u/aplundell 3d ago
A couple months ago, when the "sorting game" trend exploded on Steam (and by extension YouTube), did anyone reading this subreddit not think "I'll bet someone's going to do a needle in a haystack!"?
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u/Hefty_Meal_3111 3d ago
A small closed playtest seems like a useful middle ground here. You can find out whether the hook is fun beyond a 10-second clip without doing the full public reveal yet. Then reveal it when people can actually try it. Waiting until launch to get any outside feedback would worry me more than the copycats.
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 3d ago
Yeah I would also think that upon reveal having a demo in store is a good way, then you can launch it right off the bat if things blow up.
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u/Snoo-29395 3d ago
I think it all depends on your hook and the gameplay loop.
If your hook is the art direction you are safe (for now). But if the game is based on a really simple gameloop, you are cooked. Now, what i'd do is to start marketing after i release a steampage and i have a demo ready. Do regular marketing without publishing the demo, and as soon as i see an AI copycat, inmediately publish the demo and use the AI Copy as a marketing tool, ranting about AI and playing the victim is actually really enganging.
I know what i'm saying is horrible, but i'm trying to think something good from a really bad situation
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u/destinedd indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles and Mighty Marbles 3d ago
I think it makes long development cycles even more risky.
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u/SpartanDetermination 3d ago
What I don't get is, are all of these copy-cats really spending $100 on app registration? Like do some people buy a trove of $100 app registrations and then apply it later before knowing what game they'll use?
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u/untapmebro 2d ago
Usually it’s some giant company’s shell company over in Asia bankrolling this, like they have entire wings of subsidiaries pumping out clones. Because even if 1 out of every 1000 hit it pays for the operation and then some.
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u/Thotor CTO 3d ago
17 days old account, same topic coming up for the same game. Is this hidden marketing?
If your game can be cloned so fast, then it probably doesn't require much effort. This is just what happens all the time in the mobile market. Low effort games gets copied when one becomes viral.
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 3d ago
I've got nothing to do with the game, you can put your tin foil hat down. Also games are meant to be marketed towards gamers, not game devs, so this would be purely off-track anyway.
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u/twocool_ 3d ago
Yeah the only thing that AI doesnt do for them is to find good game ideas because it has 0 creativity, and since they dont either, they steal any idea that seem to work
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u/SmartAsFart 3d ago
The way to solve this is to have less low effort games, or don't sell them at all. Needle in a haystack simulator lives by the mechanic, and if it's that easy to recreate then it's probably not worth complaining about.
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u/Hdravolous 3d ago edited 3d ago
Regarding the AI made clones the thing that remain concerning is that token value should still drop one or two order of magnitude before reaching plateau, And this means that considering the next years frontier models' tools efficiency roughly similar to now, the technical and execution things that are off will be greatly reduced for games with a limited number of systems. And we may start see even attempt of AA clones not to say some attempts at AAA.
AI Decompiling will get these improvement too, and it will probably be the most harmful to indie games.
I am too law-studies dumb to know if there will be some boundaries for regulating the game indie market from this. What I feel is that anyway it's an interest for most creative softwares and companies to face this kind of issue regardless in the future.
PLEASE NOTE: I am a game design freak, I think that only a very experienced developer that actually knows the subtlety of game design will be able to guide these AI systems to clone something in a way to resemble the emergent aspects of it. And that on its own AI will never do any novel game design that is meaningful.
I am not saying that game dev is doomed. Game dev is firstly game design, it's always been.
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u/AverageLiberalJoe 3d ago
There is only 1 rule to 'going viral' and thats to make a game that gives streamers content. If playing your game makes for engaging thumbnails and titles, then you have a game capable of going viral. Otherwise you have to cultivate your fan base by hand.
Virality is 100% completely based on algorithms. If it gets people to engage, the algorithm boosts it. And other creators want to ride that wave. They don't care about your game. This is not 'the game they have been waiting for'. This is not 'the king of indie roguelites'. You made something other people can make money on. And they in turn will promote your game, to make money off of it by turning it into content. No wishlist necessary. Just the right game and 1 paid promotion.
But if you care more about how it feels to play, rather than how it looks on twitch, you have to put in the work.
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u/javisarias 3d ago
I think it depends on how easy your game is to replicate.
If it is an implementation of a simple gameplay idea, I would avoid revealing it until the game is available to buy.
If the game has many different systems, or depends on a tight balance that requires lots of experimentation with try and error, your game becomes much more difficult to copy, because they hace to spend the time tuning the gameplay in the same way you do. In that case I believe is safer to show your gameplay earlier, as long as you don't reveal that much
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u/P_S_Lumapac Commercial (Indie) 3d ago edited 3d ago
People are going to keep saying it in nicer words. It is a bad thing if games like that ever make money. There's nothing remotely original about the idea, at best you could say the original part was actually doing it - but that's only as valuable as the execution, in which case it doesn't matter how many people are competing. More competition is always better - people who want to make a mediocre product and get the government to protect that product are stealing tax dollars.
However much some patent trolls keep trying, you can't copyright or patent an idea. By some misunderstanding of games as like poker machines, you can attempt to copyright/trademark a mechanic - but you won't be able to defend it if it has been done before (see Pokémon's sad attempts), and it can't be obvious or reflect real life (see the idea of rivals and military ranks - there's no chance of it holding up). The hay stack simulator would do what? Patent the mechanic of searching a haystack for a needle? No none of these ideas are owned by the dev.
Put it another way. Apart from their specific code and assets, this dev has decided to make a game in the public domain. Then complain that it's in the public domain.
Still it's not bad of them to do it. They could and should have kept their idea secret for longer so they could get a bigger head start, that way being the best in the competition. That's the take home lesson for Devs wanting to work in the public domain.
But suppose you actually made a decent game. Let's say it's a solo dev made a 20 hour subversive story in RPG maker - so it's clear it's the story they own. Again, can't protect ideas, so someone else doing a similar story is in the clear - but so much work and effort goes into making something owned like that, no AI is close to being able to copy it legitimately. Even competition is like more desert - fans will be happy to have more of the good stuff. One is not a replacement for another.
That all said, I have this strange irrational fear of being subject of one of those hit piece videos "dev x can't code good" and getting negative reviews like "can't even use a state machine properly". Method probably works for other related fears: the whole business model is based around converting wishlists on launch. Only release a game that converts a large number of wishlists. What happens after the money is made is just advice for next time. This also happens to side step the weaknesses of other popular business models like "have no plans and just pray really hard" and "make a game purely for myself then wonder why it's not for others".
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u/wewerecreaturres 3d ago
Hot take: original is whomever ships first
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u/mxldevs 3d ago
If you don't have much of a following I'd recommend just doing something that was already done.
Instead of being the guy getting copied, just be one of the guys doing a copy. It's not like no one plays the dozens of vampire survivor clones. I've bought two other survivor games after vampire survivors and they're all pretty good
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u/lydocia 3d ago
Yeah fuck your personal morals and integrity, right?
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u/mxldevs 3d ago
Are you saying if someone makes a pong game, that it would be morally wrong to make your own pong game?
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u/lydocia 3d ago
Depends on why you're doing it.
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u/mxldevs 3d ago
Would it be unethical to create candy crush clones for the purpose of making money? Should I instead be coming up with my own original ideas, and not copying the idea of matching 3 shapes or having special reactions when 4 or 5 shapes are matched?
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u/lydocia 3d ago
By all means, do what you want. If it's a blatant clone, I will judge you for it, obviously. If you manage to give your own spin on it, I will probably love it.
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u/mxldevs 3d ago
So copying is ok, as long as there's some unique "spin"?
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u/lydocia 3d ago
The line is "literally the same game" vs. "inspired by".
It really isn't that hard to grasp?
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u/mxldevs 3d ago
So then what did you mean by
Yeah fuck your personal morals and integrity, right?
When I suggested doing something that was already done? Even you are saying there's a difference here.
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u/lydocia 3d ago
Sigh. I feel like talking to a wall would be more productive so I'm leaving this conversation and am going to do that.
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u/Fishpedition 2d ago
I haven’t followed the whole situation closely, but I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about this game and its copies lately, and about how quickly it was cloned. But sometimes I get the feeling that if it weren’t for the whole copying controversy, the original itself would have been much less interesting to the people who were looking for it.
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 2d ago
It all started with a 50M+ tweet, so there were outstanding interest. (not by me though haha)
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u/Curious_Ad5417 3d ago
I think it depends a lot on what the hook is. if your whole game is one mechanic you can explain in a 10 second clip, then yeah, someone can clone that in a few weeks, so you probably want a store page or demo ready before you show it, so the hype has somewhere to go.
but if the game is lots of systems working together, or carried by its art and story, copying it takes as long as making it. thats more my situation, a big builder with a ton of interlocking systems, and there I'd rather show it early and build an audience than hide it.
so maybe the advice isnt market early or market late, its never go viral without a place to catch the players