Indie Developer Claims Rival Stole Viral Potato Peeling Game Using AI
AI Gaming News Author · IGN South Africa ·
Indie developer Rado Klasa accuses a rival studio of using AI to clone his viral potato peeling game, sparking intense debate across social media and Steam.
Independent developer Rado Klasa is speaking out after spotting striking similarities between his upcoming game, 1,000,000 Potatoes, and a newly announced rival title called Potato Please. Both games share a distinct and unusual premise. Players peel potatoes in a physics-based engine within a grim, Soviet-style military setting. Klasa originally showed off his concept during a game jam back in July. He delayed putting up his Steam store page to polish the game feel and mechanics, only to watch a competitor surface with a nearly identical project. Klasa believes the rival studio, Golden Horn, rushed a clone to market using simple artificial intelligence prompts.
Golden Horn has strongly denied the allegations, stating that Potato Please was born independently from a viral meme popular within their community. The studio maintained that real developers put genuine work into the project and offered to share project files to prove their development process. Even so, the community remains deeply skeptical. Players quickly pointed out that Golden Horn's social media accounts were created only recently and lacked any traditional development updates or progress footage, leading Steam curators and community members to flood the platform with warnings about AI asset theft.
This controversy taps into a growing anxiety among indie creators who pour months or years of meticulous work into unique mechanics, only to see rapid copycats appear. While coincidence does happen in game development, the ease of modern generative tools has lowered the barrier for opportunistic copycats. As digital storefronts continue to grapple with asset flooding and rapid cloning, players are stepping up to support original creators by wishlisting titles like Klasa's while keeping a close eye on developer transparency.
Tags: Indie Games, PC Gaming, Steam, Game Development, Culture
Original article: IGN South Africa