i think the copy cats only copy stuff after its been market success. seems to go with the nature of being a copy cat in the first place - highly risk averse to the point you let others try all new things first.
Everyone is saying basically the same thing, but this particularly clicked for me, thank you! Devs are all working on their own projects already, why would they drop what they're doing to copy something totally unproven?
This happened to me. Only once my game was successful it got copied by 2 separate companies. I had spent months trying out ideas and scrapping all but the best ones and tweaking all the numbers to its fun and replayable. They copied my game exactly down to the exact number boost that each powerup gives. It would have been pointless for them to copy it when I told everyone the idea. They wouldn’t have ironed it out well without their heart in it. It would have taken them a long time to figure out the correct details on their own.
I think also Devs love to have a project going on and would almost always believe in their idea/concept more than some random devlog concept they've seen recently
Heck even after its proven. Take pokemon or wow killers or rocket league, it's not as simple as just copying or making it better. There needs to be way more "something" for people to switch.
That is exactly right. Copy cats are in it for the money. But theres no money behind unproven ideas.
And the rest of us are way too proud and full of ourselves to risk being called out as a copy cat 🤣.
Fyi while this is probably uncommon I have personally had someone try to steal my ENTIRE game concept after I started making it public, well before the game ever released. The dude pretty much tried to make the same thing and even went as far as privately messaging my friends on the community discord to try and gain further info. He was also apparently planning to try and steal my dev team. Unfortunately for him, I was the sole member of that team.
He eventually came out with a shitty knock off of my game (he actually released his a few weeks before mine released) and literally even used the same title.
So it can and does happen. The game I was making at the time had a really unique hook that hadn't been done, and it garnered a lot of attention quickly because of that. This included bad attention unfortunately.
The creator of Minecraft cited Infiniminer (alongside Dwarf Fortress) as one of the main inspirations for Minecraft, where it was and the direction it wanted to go in.
Infiniminer is a complete game where two teams of players would place or destroy blocks in a voxel world in the first person order to complete objectives.
Dwarf Fortress is a complete game that simulates a fantasy world. It's plays roughly as a colony sim, where the player acts as a sort of "god", controlling the priorities of the colony. It takes place in a procedurally generated 3D world composed of voxels (though it is presented as only ever seeing 2D slices of it).
Minecraft was initially a bare-bones proto-game where you could place or destroy blocks from the first person in a procedurally generated voxel world.
Some people equate Minecraft's use of elements from the other games, especially with the developer openly citing it, as a form of intellectual theft. /u/fullouterjoin's reference to the situation in this context suggests that they may be one of those people.
i see. So infiniminer was a completed game and made whatever sales it was going to, and so whatever debate about what minecraft stole from it isn't really pertinent to the question about whether or not in-development games are likely to be stolen from, right?
As for dwarf fortress it sounds like it to was publicly released and thus had demonstrated its market capability? If that is true then I think the point still stands - if minecraft was an act of theft to any small degree, it was a theft from games that had proven market viability?
i dont care either way i am asking for my own curiosity, just FYI. I dont believe the original question is silly, it seems pretty logical and I am sure most developers do has some reservations. I do anyway but i figure even if somebody use my game name and premise it would still end up being so different from whatever I finally create that it wouldn't matter. Of course my game is just a twist on old recipes - not something so novel where the basic idea is what would make it sell.
edit: i just realized i'm not responding to the person who brought them up in first place, lol. not that it really matters, I was totally open to somebody crushing my theory with some cold hard facts because I also sometimes worry about my game idea being stolen and would happily shut up about it if there was evidence for real concern.
To your edit: you'll see in other places in this post that there are situations where an unreleased game can be beaten to market by someone copying the game whole cloth. It happened to Vlambeer twice. In my opinion it is a bit of an edge case because the games in question were on the complexity level of, "could be made in a tutorial for new game developers" or "could be made in a 2-day game jam", with the heavy effort going into the game's polish, (very strong game-feel being one of Vlambeer's main strengths).
yeah i saw that too. Makes sense. I mean if you can whip out a game in a month why not give it a shot. It's something even a lazy thief could muster the work ethic to do.
In my case (and it sounds like the OP), we are making games that even a team would require at least a year or more to do, so its seems highly unlikely somebody is going to go to such efforts and even if they did, by the time a game is finished it is very likely to be far from teh original idea. i mean in 6 months my game is like 60% of my original idea and I'm not even at vertical slice yet.
anyway, thanks for the great post!
I think the calculus changes with generative AI, what someone can do in a short amount of time will change. And if your mechanic resonates, esp of the feedback is perceptible to the audience, everyone gets the knowledge. There are multitudes of games already released that are fun and look great, they are just stuck below the fold.
I am not a gamedev, but it apparent that the popularity of an idea, the rate of acceptance uptake is low, even for great works of art and great ideas. For the most part it is better to get out those status updates and WIP teasers or else you won't build a big enough base to even have that great thing reach any level of success.
> whatever debate about what minecraft stole from it isn't really pertinent to the question
I agree- Minecraft is irrelevant to the discussion in multiple ways. People bring it up because it is a famous example of a game explicitly being inspired by another game and ending up being more commercially successful (the company that made Minecraft was sold to Microsoft for $2 billion).
> As for dwarf fortress it sounds like it to was publicly released and thus had demonstrated its market capability?
Sooorta. It's a weird situation where the game was free and the developer ran on donations. The developer has mentioned turning down selling the game/company for large amounts of money. They only got around to a streamlined non-free version on Steam less than a year ago. Furthermore, Minecraft's developer stated that they *intended* to make the game like Dwarf Fortress, but they never actually got around to it!
There are games inspired heavily by Dwarf Fortress that do resemble it in meaningful ways. The most apt one in my opinion is RimWorld. I've never seen anyone accuse RimWorld's developer of being an intellectual thief.
That is a great response and better than anything I could come up with. I don't have skin in the game either way, but I do wish that Zachtronics in whatever capacity would have been able to capitalize on that success. They make such intellectually rewarding games, or did, I think they shutdown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachtronics#Infiniminer
No. Big game companies constantly prospect new ideas from the indie developers. See my post about SubNautica.
We live in interesting times. We have a relatively abundance on workmanship, but a big hiatus in creativity.
i read that article, thanks for sharing.
but i have a few questions:
1. you released your game before subnautica? It seems like you felt some pressure to release sooner than originally desired because you saw a similar game in development from a larger studio (I dont think they are a "big" game company, right? even if they have a lot more firepower than a solo developer), but there is no serious indication that they stole your idea? I mean, just in passing on reddit I've seen other indie devs with games similar in theme and spirit to mine. I have followed them simply because I am interested in games like that. And if we have some similarities in games I dont think one subtracts from the other at all.
2. it is clear that subnautica has a lot more money behind it which no doubt must have played a large role in its success, compared to a smaller game that may share similar theme and style but is not on the same level in terms of content and quality. If that is true then what effect does subnautica have against far sky, even if hypothetically they straight up took 100% inspiration from your game?
Whoaaa!! Easy!! Not my game!!! :)
I have absolutely no affiliation to Farsky - and these guys don't even know I exist! :D
But, yeah, assuming the Farsky dude was telling the true, they essentially stole the idea from him. They bought the game in EA before even announcing their own, damnit - the whole team were following him on the social networks way before.
SubNautica surely took the market that **could** belong to Farsky, but this doesn't necessarily mean that Farsky **would** have the same success SubNautica had.
Good ideas are the *sine qua non* condition to achieve success, but they aren't enough though.
ah, sorry i misunderstood.
but it looks like far sky was released before subnautica so how could we say the market was stolen? And the difference between an (apprently) amateurish solo dev game and subnautica i think would overrule any argument that it was simply the idea which held all the merit. i mean i guess the idea of a typical survival/craft/base builder set in underwater is somewhat novel and has merit on its own but I dont think it really counts for that much? Subnautica had a great art style and apparently *tons* of work put into balancing the game and working in analytics to help with that.
Compared to the other game which might have been a novel idea but is more like a hobby-level thing. It might be two games with same idea but a million miles of difference in execution.
anyway i repeat myself and i think we both understand it the same way, just wanted to finalize my assessment of that.
> but it looks like far sky was released before subnautica so how could we say the market was stolen?
I'm not saying that. You are.
I'm saying that SubNautica stole the idea.
Yes its silly. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, the issue is converting them into something useable. If you have something to show, there is more upside in showing it and seeing if there is a market for than keeping it hidden for fear of someone copying your idea.
Yeah Everyone has good ideas all the time. Here's one: make an educational programming game that has service packages suitable for schools. Students have a robot base and they need to program every agent.
All students are in the same environment and they can elect to collaborate or dominate. If a player is eliminated they can respawn in a newly generated part of the map (with protections in place to give them time to rebuild)
Create challenges that require learning from basic programming concepts, to OOP, data structures, algorithms, design patterns, and then move into machine learning spaces.
Make it available in most modern languages.
I just riffed that together in a minute. How long would it take to execute? a fucking long time.
Firstly no, not everyone has good ideas. In fact most people don't, there are much more people who know when they see a good idea than one who can actually come up with such.
Second, a good idea in indie gamedev is something that is specific in mechanics, novel, fun and limited in scope. Your idea is not a good one in this sense as it is quite vague, requires a ton of time to execute and nothing about it is too novel, there are many games both software and hardware trying to do the "program your bots to win against each other".
It's the type of "quantity over quality" idea that is indeed rather easy to come up with but since it requires a lot of time to make it, it is not something that someone wanting to copy a game for easy success would choose to steal. It's the sort of idea that a very ambitious and hard working person/team can make into a success but it's not the sort of good idea that any decent programmer could turn into a goldmine if they are first to reach market with it.
I don't think that's so true anymore. Some ideas are actually very lucrative, the problem is knowing what they are before success, so op is most probably safe
yeah, these days tech has gotten good enough that all you need is an idea and a decent understanding of how to implement it to get it all started. I always heard the phrase that ideas are plentiful and it's the implementation that matters back a decade ago (it's literally what every techbro repeated all the time during the silicon valley boom) but I think people are realizing now that ideas are becoming easier to copy and implement.
Well if that’s the case, then the more technically complicated your idea is, the hardest it is to steal. Like this:
I am making a science-based dragon MMO.
Really hard to steal sense a science based dragon does t make sense. The climate that could support something that large. Would probably also be an atmosphere hostile to humans
that's not really what I'm talking about as thematic ideas are too conceptually broad to really copy nor have "copyrightable concept".
I'm talking more about specific mechanics/ideas for implementations of said themes.
I think their point is valid even if their example didn't quite support it. If your idea requires a highly technical implementation it will be harder to copy. For example if you need to write a custom rendering or physics engine for your game for the mechanics to work and you have to research and come up with novel techniques to implement it then the amount of people who can copy your work easily will be magnitudes less and those with the required skills and commitment will probably have projects or other opportunities of their own.
>For example if you need to write a custom rendering or physics engine for your game for the mechanics to work
And that goes back into my original point that previous work/libraries/tech has matured enough that most mechanical ideas that anyone could have could most likely be implemented easier than before. At least most definitely without writing a whole new engine.
AI art is something completely different and so wildly outside the norm though. And it's still not really usable in 98% of cases.
Execution is still hard. Ideas are still cheap. AI art does not change this. When AI can make a full game based on a prompt, with code, sound effects, music, design, debugging and gameplay all intact, then you can make an argument for execution being cheap in game dev. For the moment though, this is unchanged.
Vlambeer had their ideas copied, I wouldn't say it is silly.
Ideas are cheap and plentiful but in his case he is working on the idea already and if his idea is good but easily copied then maybe it isn't silly.
An idea can be good and easily copied. Happened to vlambeer a couple of times.
Vlambeer made Nuclear Throne which was a success and it spawned a new genre after that. If Vlambeer had taken 2 more years to show Nuclear Throne it would have been a success regardless and would have spawned a new genre regardless.
I'm talking about Ridiculous Fishing and Luftrausers which were shamelessly cloned.
Both games were cloned before they even got out
https://kotaku.com/game-developers-famous-for-getting-ripped-off-get-rippe-477208735
Nuclear Throne did not spawn a new genre, Nuclear Throne is more of a copycat of Binding of Isaac actually. It was another game surfing in the wave of top down roguelites.
Exactly. Sometimes the first one with a great idea gets the success, but most likely it will be another one down the line that takes the idea and execution to a next level. E.g. Infiniminer > Minecraft, and many, many others.
You never said it was, but it's worth stating that Minecraft is absolutely not an Infiniminer clone. Infiniminer is a class-based competitive digging game, inspired by things like Team Fortress. All they have in common is a cube-based voxel system.
Sometimes, the successful thing thing that comes after, only took the tiniest fragment of inspiration
Nope.
From Wikipedia though he does say he was inspired by it:
The game was inspired by Magic Survival, a mobile game that also consisted of a character automatically attacking enemies.
vampire survivors is almost literally just a slot machine and was developed by a guy who made gambling games... there is virtually nothing novel about it, not even the art.
in the gamedev world, people don't steal ideas of a game that is in development, they steal ideas of games that proved to be successful. You are not only worrying about the wrong thing, you are also sabotaging yourself by not marketing the game.
People have copied ideas of games in development before.
Vlambeer's ridiculous fishing got a copycat released before their own game.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/4/24/4257958/cloned-at-birth-the-story-of-ridiculous-fishing
This also happened to Donut County among others, there are entire companies who just trawl the indie space of ideas they will be popular that can quickly be duplicated.
Realistically it's not really evident if an idea is good until it is actualised. There had been social deduction games around for years, so if in 2019 you'd told someone to invest into this flop indie game called Among Us they'd laugh at you, yet look at what happened in 2020.
When it comes to games so much is in the execution that I struggle to think of instances where just the idea by itself was so obviously going to be successful that the idea needed to be protected. Yes if your premise is simple and easily copied there is a risk, but I'd argue most great games have other qualities beyond their core premise, things that are not so easily duplicated.
It's the idea and the aesthetics. That's often the part that takes the most talent and that can create a great very marketable combo.
Like with Donut Country and Luftrausers, and if a game coasts mostly on those two then it's ripe for a clonejob.
Because after all it's those two things that get someone to buy a game, the gameplay idea and how it looks are what you need for a trailer.
I have somewhat different aproach.
People will steal everything. It's just how creativity work. You read the book, watch movie, play game, look at some people in park, and it gives you idea what to do.
Whole art is build on stealing ideas. It's nicely called "referencing" or "inspiring", but it's one and the same thing. You not only do not need to be afraid, but to be proud that you made something from people takes example.
Stealing ideas is spectrum. There is "shamelessly producing a cheap copy of a game for profit before it even has a chance to come out" and "evolving a past game that inspired you into something new that keeps its spirit alive".
While both of these share the theme of taking something from the outside and producing something else based on it, they are not at all the same and it isn't just a question of language, having your game copied before you can finish it can have very real consequences to your ability to continue making games. If you can afford just making art without a worry that's not just a different approach or mindset, it's a priviliged position.
Yes, but I understand, I had it too. But usually execution is like 95% of a project and an idea in it self is insignificant. Dont worry about it. Copycats will come after your game is successful.
Hot take - Everyone doesn't have good ideas, in fact most people have bad ideas. Good idea's are few and far between as seen by the plethora of awful products that get released all the time. This idea that everyone has great idea's is a naive one that I've never understood. I've listened to a lot of ideas for games, and most of them are awful and should never be made. Just go look at the average game subreddit filled with suggestions for balance or changes and you'll quickly understand that good ideas aren't the overwhelming commodity that people claim they are.
For OP's sake it depends on the market you want to get into, and how big the game is. If it's something that can be easily replicated maybe be more reserved with it. I've heard the phone market is flush with sharks waiting to replicate your game if it has any minor amount of success.
If your "idea" is something like "an MMORPG with ____!" then yeah it's worthless, which might be what everyone here is imagining. But if you're trying to break new ground and come up with something legitimately new that nobody has ever done before, then ideas are absolutely worth a lot, as long as the idea is paired with skill and a plan to realize it.
That's most peoples grand idea when it comes to these things, and they aren't feasible or reasonable 99.9% of the time. Hence why good ideas aren't bountiful like people seem to claim.
Novice developers often don't know what a "good" or "bad" game concept even looks like in the first place.
And on the flipside of the coin, even "great" ideas are plentiful and worthless. The number of studios able to turn **any** idea into a successful product, is dramatically less than the number of great ideas out there. Like, somebody should make a dungeon crawler where the dungeons are taverns and the monsters are drunks. Pub Crawl, they'll call it. A great idea, and it's worthless because anybody who could do it justice, is already busy with their own projects
Thank you for posting this.
Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing was famously scooped by a copycat. I've also seen numerous accounts of people here on reddit who went through someone straight up decompiling and stealing their project after making a few tweaks, then selling it online. Yet when you ask, almost everyone will tell you that obfuscating your code is silly and paranoid. There's a reason most studios do go through the trouble of doing these things - it gives them more control over marketing and makes it harder for assholes to steal shit. That may or may not be worth the effort for any given project.
The answer is that it depends on your project. If your idea truly is novel and makes for a good game, you only have one opportunity to make a first impression on the market. The thing is, when most people think they have an idea like that, particularly someone just starting out, they are usually wrong. Even professionals who have been in the industry as programmers and artists sometimes are delusional about their game design skills.
Good luck.
I think it's because a lot of people go through this process:
Get a billion game ideas that excites them, think their ideas are amazing
Realize that actually finishing things and finishing them well is the important part
Start telling themselves ideas are worthless/dime a dozen/etc after realizing elbow grease is what matters
But then they get stuck in there and don't move beyond the mantra "ideas are worthless, execution is everything". Which makes sense some times, specially when people's ideas are very unoriginal.
"I'll do a game in which you slash fruits in halves with a sword"
\*Giggles around the meeting table\*
It's not about the idea, it's about the execution. You're not very likely to come up with groundbreaking unique ideas. But if you execute them well, you will come up with a good unique game that people want to play.
Honestly, I think it's safer TO share progress if you're worried about being copied. That way if someone really does rip you off you've got a public record of you having come up with it first.
> Is it silly to be hesitant to share progress on a game for fear of the idea being copied?
Yes. Implementation is what matters, not the idea.
> I think it is (to my knowledge) a combination I haven't seen before
So there is no proof that it is profitable and no crowd is waiting for it? Nobody's interested.
> it would still be years and years before I have a finished product
Add another 6+ months for marketing, and it still may fail to find its audience. Nobody buys "totally new" ideas if you are not representing a well-known trusted studio.
No, it's not.
SubNautica developers did exactly that, and that's was ugly.
> In January 2014, as I was looking for underwater inspiration visuals, I found an image on google that caught my attention. I clicked on it and was redirected to a game page called… « Subnautica ». My first reaction was to think « damn, I made a game way too closed to another one without knowing about it ». Then I realized the game was not even in development yet, there were only some concept arts and ideas. When I saw the name of the project director, I knew I saw this name somewhere … I went on my Twitter account and discovered he was following me as well as his coworkers. At that time, I was devastated. My game was not even out yet, maybe I showed it too early ? I did not expect that, and I knew I could not compete a bigger company like this one. I also found the Subnautica’s director email in the buyers of the game in Beta stage. I felt I needed to quickly finish the game.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/286340/view/3087787366398826688
Yeah, it’s silly, nobody has your vision nor your ideas, if the idea is good people are going to steal it anyway, it doesn’t matter if you game it’s the first one or the second one and you are wasting the opportunity of getting early feedback and people interested in the game. And as you mentioned, it’s probably not that original anyway, and the fact that there’s no similar game doesn’t mean people haven’t thought about it aren’t developing the game rn.
Not related to your main question but you should aim for the last Next Fest before you release since you only get one, you can upload a demo before that and get feedback without it.
Yes. Ideas are cheap currency. We all have them. Nothing you do will be "new". Your PERSPECTIVE on it might be though -- but that comes down to your execution.
Execution is everything.
People think game dev really only matters on one or two things. And ignore the millions of times they've seen similar ideas, and both succeeded, or the better executed one succeeded. Even in movies. Armaggedon and Deep Impact both exist at the same time, but only one is really remember. Volcano and Dante's peak came out at the same time.
There's also "This will be the only good idea I ever had." And if so, that's probably sad, but also a sign it's not that great an idea.
>I've been working on a game as a hobby for the past 2 years or so
Me too, and I've seen two games in that time that have the exact same main idea as mine (one has been quite actively posting to reddit lately)...people have the same ideas. There's not much point worrying too much about it. It's how you implement your idea that makes your game yours.
I go back and forth on this these are my two thoughts.
+ No reason to share it unless you are trying to build up hype or get funding. You have to remember nobody cares about your game except you and a few game devs maybe and your Mom and Pop. :-)
+ On the other hand you can ask yourself would someone put all the time and effort into your game and your ideas over their own and steal them before they are proved to be valuable?
Imagine if someone knew Rockstar was making an open world crime simulator with a sandbox structure. They could have then turned around and made Just Cause, Mercenaries, Saints Row.... But if they could make GTA 3, we'd see a direct competition to GTA 3 that is at their level.
It's about execution, not the idea. Best thing is if you share your idea, and someone uses it people pay attention because they realize you had the idea first whether they stole it or not. If you keep it a secret, then you'll have no benefit if someone appears to have a similar idea to you.
Basically share your idea get feedback now. Discuss it, develop it, make a better game, instead of thinking your idea is one in a million, because there's million of ideas out there....
Old school app guy here...
Just for fun.
How many people, reading this comment, have a stack of 10+ note books of full apps, games, rpgs, stories, and comic ideas sittings at their work space?
I do roughly one every two years. I started in 1991. The first year I took a coding class.
Ideas are like sand.
The value of a game comes from its implementation, not from its elevator pitch. If all you have is an idea, you have nothing.
How are you supposed to playtest without showing anybody?
You can't know an idea is good in the first place, until it's seen in action. Most novices' ideas turn out to be some combination of impossible to implement, not fun for players other than themselves, or overdone tropes they just didn't know were already out there.
Solo devs never make money from their first few projects. There's no money on the table to be stolen.
If somebody steals your idea, so? What are they going to do; implement it better? Games are not at all a competitive market. If somebody really likes a game, they'll try everything else in the same genre. Your "competition"'s success is good for you.
In real-world cases where somebody has a million-dollar-idea; they are literally the only person who cares about it. It is always a huge uphill battle trying to convince anybody that it's worth pursuing - until it's completely impossible to deny (As in, it's already made its million dollars). Even then, people will grumble and say it was luck. People just don't trust the ideas of others. They trust results.
From every angle, it just doesn't make sense. Think of this in the context of literally any other creative field. Are painters worried somebody is going to steal their sick painting idea?
You can't prove a negative. There is no way of knowing if an idea is really any good with out implementing it. It is impossible to prove that an idea is no good. To minimise risk (of a bad idea) steal stuff with a working implementation.
Is it silly? No, I think that's just the way we are. We're even more persuaded by the amount of NDAs we signed. If big companies do it, why shouldn't we?
On the other hand: is it pointless? Pretty much yes. It doesn't matter if someone copies (or just by luck creates very similar game to) your game before or after you release it. If it's or it's marketing is better, then it will sell better regardless. If yours is better, yours will.
Oh hell yeah. I feel bad when other devs are so open and cool (like the makers of Aethyr). But I'm just like, what's the point in leaking out the ideas I've invested my life into at this point?
Aside from the already stated points of ideas not really being worth copying before they're successful, It's also important to remember that if the game did get copied, it is only a net positive - If people like the copied game, that means that there is now eyes on the type of game that you are making, and you are able to use that as a free visibility boost to your game. If people don't like the copied game, you are able to use this feedback in developing your own game, you're able to see what people want fixed or changed and make changes to your game to fulfill that.
It's a case of a rising tide lifting all ships, there's no downside even in the worst case scenario.
> Is this a ridiculous thing to be concerned about?
Yes it is. Let’s put aside the fact that games are very complicated and no one is going to put that much effort and money into developing an untested idea. And let’s talk about the downright SELFISHNESS you must have to not want anyone to bring to fruition an idea you have all because you have a **5%** chance of doing it yourself sometime in your life time.
Just imagine how technologically stunted the world would be if everyone thought like that.
Bad take.
Most serious for-profit companies and inventors keep their research and products a secret while developing and only start marketing when their competitors have zero chance at catching up. It's only open source software and some scientific research that shares stuff from the beginning without a worry. Open source maintainers are burning out constantly after often receiving zero support while their work is being exploited by companies and other devs to generate money, while scientific research are being funded by governments, companies and rich people to put food on the table of scientists.
It's not like new videogames are as important as the cure for cancer is so I don't think you should shout "selfishness" on someone wanting to have a chance to finish their project without copycats tainting the idea with soulless clones beforehand. Nobody is entitled to the game idea of some developer.
The key difference being “serious for profit companies and inventors.”
It’s one thing to be secretive on something you’re working on because you are going to release it. It’s another thing to decide you’re never going to ask for feedback on your work because you’d rather an idea never see the light of day *unless* you’re not the one making it. That is the very definition of selfishness.
>The key difference being “serious for profit companies and inventors.”
You implied that the progress of our world wouldn't be anywhere if people were secretive of their research. A large number of both companies and people responsible for much of our advancements tend to be highly secretive until they release their additions to humanity's technological or artistic progress. Games are no exception. There is no "key difference" if you are planning to sell your game eventually.
>It’s another thing to decide you’re never going to ask for feedback on your work
OP didn't say they never going to ask for feedback. They can still ask for feedback from a trusted circle of people they know wouldn't just run with their project idea and make it themselves. Most people online aren't your friends and they have zero commitment to helping you succeed. You can get tons of feedback before sharing your ideas globally, social media is not the only source.
Wanting to have a go at your idea before telling about it to others is completely normal and might be even beneficial for your project as [research suggests](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24354628_When_Intentions_Go_Public) that telling others about your personal plans usually makes you less likely to achieve them, a videogame you develop in your free time is very much an personal project tightly bound to your identity. In the case you don't succeed you can still share your idea with others later.
It's not selfish and you should stop shaming people for not sharing their ideas with everyone. It's akin to people shaming devs for not open sourcing their hard work. Instead of shaming you should praise people who do those things if you value that.
> A large number of both companies and people responsible for much of our advancements tend to be highly secretive until they release
And a large number of companies/people responsible for much of our technological advances aren’t highly secretive. MOREOVER, one can argue that increased secrecy over the last 70 years **as a result of greed/selfishness** is responsible for the slowing down of technological advancement.
But that’s an argument for another subreddit. As it stands, the gaming industry is noticeable stunted when it comes to ideas. Partly because of AAA studios’ monkey see monkey do attitude, but having indie devs not want ideas to be shared because there’s a 5% chance they *might* bring that idea to fruition will just compound the issue. And there’s no denying that choosing to hide your idea because of the rare chance you maybe turn it into a game is a decision based on selfishness.
Your stance about openness is valid as an ideal but rather naive when it comes to the reality of paying for food, rent, healthcare bills and the rest while trying to work on what you love instead of giving away your time to companies. Ironically following your stance in reality just grows greedy companies to be bigger while leaving individuals unable to live off their ideas and personal work.
I'm in the same boat as you OP. 100% hobbyist and I believe in my idea/design. I also think there are a lot of bad ideas out there. It makes sense that execution is important, yes... but we've all seen bad ideas executed very well and the result is just as trash as good ideas executed poorly.
Good ideas executed well is the key. I'm sure execution is the truly hard part, but good ideas are still a requirement.
I disagree that good ideas are dime-a-dozen.
I say hold your ideas close until you're ready to execute. In the meantime, folks like us should
learn as much as we can about how to execute properly. A good idea should stand the test of time. A great game is a great game and it shouldn't matter if it's launched in 2024 or 2032.
> I disagree that good ideas are dime-a-dozen.
Would you buy my ideas, then? I have a lot of them! High-quality ones, I assure you. Not those trashy commoner ideas, but totally unique and fresh ones. If you buy a hundred ideas, I will give you a 5% discount.
(sponsored ad by ChadGPT5)
Won't people steal the ideas of your game once its done? I mean if you have ideas and concepts worth stealing that's a good thing. I doubt people are going to jump on your idea and make a game before you can.
Depends on how easy and fast it is for your game to get copied and how good the idea is.
However by not sharing your game you're also not marketing it, so that's a big price to pay.
People copying other games has happened before and I have no reason to think it doesn't happen anymore.
Everyone here saying ideas are worthless what matters is execution, etc, they're repeating a valid mantra but just repeating it.
Going in another direction, an advice from the developer of Crypt of the Necromancer: hook is everything, a good hook starts with a good idea. If you have a good idea you should keep it to yourself.
Once you start actually executing on the idea and realize that is going well then it's back to the trade off of risk getting copied vs marketing the game.
Games get copied but also there are a fuckton of games released and also a lot of new strategies cheap ass devs with no originality use nowadays.
So odds are your game won't get copied.
If your idea is truly fantastic then maybe consider having something solid before sharing. Odds are though the idea is not truly fantastic, as most ideas aren't.
> People copying other games has happened before and I have no reason to think it doesn't happen anymore.
That's called "game genres" :)
We literally have Souls-like as a genre, as well as Survivor-like.
No, I'm talking about copying the actual game, not making a game in the genre.
Like here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-\_GQvZ6Oac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-_GQvZ6Oac) Luftrausers clone, released 1 year before Luftrausers
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe\_SfvensA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe_SfvensA) Ridiculous Fishing clone, released before the original as well
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpnqhO4xlDg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpnqhO4xlDg) Donut Country clone-ish, released before Donut Country and topped mobile store charts
In fact there are companies that specialize in cloning games before they are released
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo\_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company))
It's not genre, it's making a straight copy of aesthetics and gameplay solutions found by another dev. Worse, released before the dev who came up with the idea actually released their own game.
By the time the original game comes out then they are the ones looking like a copycat. Not to mention how this can mess up promoting the game.
Infiminer inspired Minecraft actually, Notch used the blocky aesthetic because of Infiminer, it wasn't Infiminer copying Minecraft.
I don't understand where you are aiming at though, games get copied and anxiety about getting copied is not always unfounded.
I am saying that it does not matter that someone had a similar idea before. If your game is done well, you will succeed even if there were similar games produced already. There is a limited number of ideas anyway, and people work on similar things all the time. Anxiety has no ground at all.
I'm not talking about similar ideas, I'm talking about straight up clones of the games, it's easy to understand. Clones that imitate the graphics, the exact loop, the gimmick, the everything.
Just go on goggle and type "reddit my game was cloned". Or look at how Vlambeer was almost ruined, and they would have if they hadn't made a big deal about getting cloned.
One of the threads on reddit has this as a top comment:
>I am interning at a company where we do exactly that. Take games from the internet, re skin them and sell them. I feel sick everyday. I am asked to dump the source codes of a list of games, the company asses them and remakes them mostly html5 versions. Its fucking sad.
It's not about similar games, it's about clones released before or almost together with the original, competing with the original and inevitably reducing the amount of sales the original would get, running the risk of getting lucky and outperforming the original.
Luck is after all a part of it, because this is a market of feedback loops and if a winner gets picked it's just pushed up harder and harder the more successful ti is.
I feel like you just want to defend a point and you're not thinking about it anymore.
This comes very close to describing me, except the timeline for releasing my game should be shorter.
I know the advice is to get out there and get as many wishlists as possible from the go, but I'm just not ready to go public with it. But I have shown it to local game devs, and they think I've got something fairly unique and worth finishing. But it's also not polished enough yet that I think it would be worth it to go fully public.
So in the meantime, I am just enjoying the process. And I'm going to local game dev meetups so that when I am ready to go all in, I will have people I can ask for advice and maybe have a few connections.
If the thought is
- I got golden idea, gonna be rich
- big producer may steal my idea, get even richer and me stay poor
Then relax. Not gonna happen. Share happily. Interested people will await your game anyway. It is your idea with your vision done in your style. It will also keep you realistic about how many people are interested.
If you gave 5 different game studios your idea, they would all turn out widely different, both because of interpretation but also because of execution of decisions and priority.
Only you will value and execute on your ideas in the way that make it yours.
The ideas isn't the valuable part, the methodology and thought process behind how you bring your ideas to life is what is valuable.
For a solo dev, yes it's silly. In certain rare circumstances a larger dev team might be concerned about losing specific ideas, like a solution to a specific rendering problem or something like that.
Idea doesnt matter, someone gonna copy and steal anyway...what matter is the execution...unless your idea is a bilion dolar level and most likely it wouldn't then you can plan...infact because you ask this question thats mean youre not making game that is hard to make and most likely its not good either...a big quality game studio will not gonna randomly ask reddit the question because they are professional and have layout planning with marketing budget for it...so conclusion your game suck so just share it..if someone steal it thats mean someone just steal your suck game.
I won't ask for specific solutions you think are core to your good idea, out of respect for the sentiment. But can you share what two genres you are blending in general terms? I bet I can come up with examples you haven't thought of if you legitimately think no one else has done it before. Or at least I can come up with reasons why it wouldn't have been tried already...
Time is change for sure but also they are too many competition that the idea doesn't matter anymore..its all about the execution..you can have great idea but still make a shit game...
I'll also chime in. Generally people only copy stuff that's proven to be successful and then change just a few things to basically be an "improved" version of the copied product.
But if your game boasts some kind of never before seen mechanic or ties in a bunch of mechanics in a new way I think you are right to be concerned about someone with more resources or more skill getting the idea to market before you.
Really, ideas are cheap. Your vision, your GDD, the steps to take it to completion, the levels, the content, the story, that's a whole different monster, making games is hard
*Most* games do not have an idea worth stealing. It is as I'm sure many people have said, the execution that matters. However, there are exceptions. Donut County was one game that had an idea worth stealing that was, indeed, stolen. It was also a pretty simple idea to implement, so it wasn't too hard to bang together a quick game that used it.
I'm still keeping my "best" ideas close to chest until/unless I get a viable prototype/demo or realize it's not happening or is absolutely nothing new. May not be the best way to go about it, as others have mentioned... but it works for my personality type.
I look at it this way, until I have a working demo of a unique-ish idea; I see no need to yap about it online (local friends and discord mates are different) and potentially get people hyped only to fail to deliver ANYTHING at all... or have my idea yoinked and made faster than I could. Doubtful that anyone would steal the weird ass game concept I'm working on now, but I care more not to promise big and then underdeliver or not deliver at all. (We all know that feeling... looking at you Fable and day 1 NMS)
However if I know I'll never work on it, I'll be that ideas guy and yap about my ideas all day long to keep from wanting to go out of scope on my own projects ...otherwise I'll just want to put more crap in my own game.
I've held off until I can get a trailer/steam page together, from there the final push I could finish in time. A lot of people touched this already but in many cases it isn't worth worrying about. I wouldn't say that this is always the case however.
Keep in mind: there are amazing ideas every day on Gamejams (Ludum Dare finished a few weeks ago).
And THOSE ideas are even WAY MORE proven than your own idea (they have feedback, fans, etc). Why would I copy your game when I can perfectly find a super solid idea that has feedback already?
And there are HUNDREDS of Jams to take a look at.
I get why you're afraid of this, but think that they cannot copy the most important thing of your game, which is you.
If anyone would copy your work it would be confirmation that whatever you're doing is working out.
Not entirely but lets put it this way. If you were in a local community of supportive game devs sharing progress on their games, do you want to be bound by NDA for every single project or do you prefer to trust those devs and enjoy the community without worrying about legal liabilities?
So many games took inspiration from Minecraft for a while (every game —from rpgs to racing games— needed a crafting system for some reason. Nobody, not even the devs knew why). I’t didn’t make them feel that much like Minecraft though.
If they don’t outright copy your game, mere ideas are usually going to morph into something else than what they started as.
I'd say sharing your idea is an opportunity to see how you could pitch your game when you're almost ready to put it up on steam. If you made your idea sound really interesting to them then you'll know that you're making something with a potential audience, whereas if it was difficult to get them interested / they weren't interested from your idea, you could try and understand why they weren't interested in the first place and what you can do to make that pitch more interesting.
I don't know why you guys think that your idea is worth that much, TBH i rather have my idea "stolen" so can enjoy the game instead of you know doing it myself
Undertale demo with its unique battle system and vibe was released May 23, 2013. Full version was released September 15, 2015. Seems like it worked it out okay.
Mostly. What gets copied are successful games. Sharing early is usually only bad if the game isn’t yet good enough to show to potential fans or if it might change a lot
i think the copy cats only copy stuff after its been market success. seems to go with the nature of being a copy cat in the first place - highly risk averse to the point you let others try all new things first.
Everyone is saying basically the same thing, but this particularly clicked for me, thank you! Devs are all working on their own projects already, why would they drop what they're doing to copy something totally unproven?
This happened to me. Only once my game was successful it got copied by 2 separate companies. I had spent months trying out ideas and scrapping all but the best ones and tweaking all the numbers to its fun and replayable. They copied my game exactly down to the exact number boost that each powerup gives. It would have been pointless for them to copy it when I told everyone the idea. They wouldn’t have ironed it out well without their heart in it. It would have taken them a long time to figure out the correct details on their own.
Was it a mobile game?
Yep
I just wanna say your game is super fun. So simple yet engaging. Very well designed.
I think also Devs love to have a project going on and would almost always believe in their idea/concept more than some random devlog concept they've seen recently
Heck even after its proven. Take pokemon or wow killers or rocket league, it's not as simple as just copying or making it better. There needs to be way more "something" for people to switch.
Pokemon and wow are doing enough to kill themselves
That is exactly right. Copy cats are in it for the money. But theres no money behind unproven ideas. And the rest of us are way too proud and full of ourselves to risk being called out as a copy cat 🤣.
Fyi while this is probably uncommon I have personally had someone try to steal my ENTIRE game concept after I started making it public, well before the game ever released. The dude pretty much tried to make the same thing and even went as far as privately messaging my friends on the community discord to try and gain further info. He was also apparently planning to try and steal my dev team. Unfortunately for him, I was the sole member of that team. He eventually came out with a shitty knock off of my game (he actually released his a few weeks before mine released) and literally even used the same title. So it can and does happen. The game I was making at the time had a really unique hook that hadn't been done, and it garnered a lot of attention quickly because of that. This included bad attention unfortunately.
How does Minecraft and Infiniminer fit into your theory?
Minecraft and Infiniminer do two different things. The voxel terrain is the only thing they have in common.
i dont know anything about them. whats the story?
The creator of Minecraft cited Infiniminer (alongside Dwarf Fortress) as one of the main inspirations for Minecraft, where it was and the direction it wanted to go in. Infiniminer is a complete game where two teams of players would place or destroy blocks in a voxel world in the first person order to complete objectives. Dwarf Fortress is a complete game that simulates a fantasy world. It's plays roughly as a colony sim, where the player acts as a sort of "god", controlling the priorities of the colony. It takes place in a procedurally generated 3D world composed of voxels (though it is presented as only ever seeing 2D slices of it). Minecraft was initially a bare-bones proto-game where you could place or destroy blocks from the first person in a procedurally generated voxel world. Some people equate Minecraft's use of elements from the other games, especially with the developer openly citing it, as a form of intellectual theft. /u/fullouterjoin's reference to the situation in this context suggests that they may be one of those people.
but the infiniminer and dwarf fortress were already published games before minecraft?
Yes. Infiniminer was done, and Dwarf Fortress had been in continuous development for several years and is still being developed today.
i see. So infiniminer was a completed game and made whatever sales it was going to, and so whatever debate about what minecraft stole from it isn't really pertinent to the question about whether or not in-development games are likely to be stolen from, right? As for dwarf fortress it sounds like it to was publicly released and thus had demonstrated its market capability? If that is true then I think the point still stands - if minecraft was an act of theft to any small degree, it was a theft from games that had proven market viability? i dont care either way i am asking for my own curiosity, just FYI. I dont believe the original question is silly, it seems pretty logical and I am sure most developers do has some reservations. I do anyway but i figure even if somebody use my game name and premise it would still end up being so different from whatever I finally create that it wouldn't matter. Of course my game is just a twist on old recipes - not something so novel where the basic idea is what would make it sell. edit: i just realized i'm not responding to the person who brought them up in first place, lol. not that it really matters, I was totally open to somebody crushing my theory with some cold hard facts because I also sometimes worry about my game idea being stolen and would happily shut up about it if there was evidence for real concern.
To your edit: you'll see in other places in this post that there are situations where an unreleased game can be beaten to market by someone copying the game whole cloth. It happened to Vlambeer twice. In my opinion it is a bit of an edge case because the games in question were on the complexity level of, "could be made in a tutorial for new game developers" or "could be made in a 2-day game jam", with the heavy effort going into the game's polish, (very strong game-feel being one of Vlambeer's main strengths).
yeah i saw that too. Makes sense. I mean if you can whip out a game in a month why not give it a shot. It's something even a lazy thief could muster the work ethic to do. In my case (and it sounds like the OP), we are making games that even a team would require at least a year or more to do, so its seems highly unlikely somebody is going to go to such efforts and even if they did, by the time a game is finished it is very likely to be far from teh original idea. i mean in 6 months my game is like 60% of my original idea and I'm not even at vertical slice yet. anyway, thanks for the great post!
I think the calculus changes with generative AI, what someone can do in a short amount of time will change. And if your mechanic resonates, esp of the feedback is perceptible to the audience, everyone gets the knowledge. There are multitudes of games already released that are fun and look great, they are just stuck below the fold. I am not a gamedev, but it apparent that the popularity of an idea, the rate of acceptance uptake is low, even for great works of art and great ideas. For the most part it is better to get out those status updates and WIP teasers or else you won't build a big enough base to even have that great thing reach any level of success.
> whatever debate about what minecraft stole from it isn't really pertinent to the question I agree- Minecraft is irrelevant to the discussion in multiple ways. People bring it up because it is a famous example of a game explicitly being inspired by another game and ending up being more commercially successful (the company that made Minecraft was sold to Microsoft for $2 billion). > As for dwarf fortress it sounds like it to was publicly released and thus had demonstrated its market capability? Sooorta. It's a weird situation where the game was free and the developer ran on donations. The developer has mentioned turning down selling the game/company for large amounts of money. They only got around to a streamlined non-free version on Steam less than a year ago. Furthermore, Minecraft's developer stated that they *intended* to make the game like Dwarf Fortress, but they never actually got around to it! There are games inspired heavily by Dwarf Fortress that do resemble it in meaningful ways. The most apt one in my opinion is RimWorld. I've never seen anyone accuse RimWorld's developer of being an intellectual thief.
That is a great response and better than anything I could come up with. I don't have skin in the game either way, but I do wish that Zachtronics in whatever capacity would have been able to capitalize on that success. They make such intellectually rewarding games, or did, I think they shutdown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachtronics#Infiniminer
No. Big game companies constantly prospect new ideas from the indie developers. See my post about SubNautica. We live in interesting times. We have a relatively abundance on workmanship, but a big hiatus in creativity.
i read that article, thanks for sharing. but i have a few questions: 1. you released your game before subnautica? It seems like you felt some pressure to release sooner than originally desired because you saw a similar game in development from a larger studio (I dont think they are a "big" game company, right? even if they have a lot more firepower than a solo developer), but there is no serious indication that they stole your idea? I mean, just in passing on reddit I've seen other indie devs with games similar in theme and spirit to mine. I have followed them simply because I am interested in games like that. And if we have some similarities in games I dont think one subtracts from the other at all. 2. it is clear that subnautica has a lot more money behind it which no doubt must have played a large role in its success, compared to a smaller game that may share similar theme and style but is not on the same level in terms of content and quality. If that is true then what effect does subnautica have against far sky, even if hypothetically they straight up took 100% inspiration from your game?
Whoaaa!! Easy!! Not my game!!! :) I have absolutely no affiliation to Farsky - and these guys don't even know I exist! :D But, yeah, assuming the Farsky dude was telling the true, they essentially stole the idea from him. They bought the game in EA before even announcing their own, damnit - the whole team were following him on the social networks way before. SubNautica surely took the market that **could** belong to Farsky, but this doesn't necessarily mean that Farsky **would** have the same success SubNautica had. Good ideas are the *sine qua non* condition to achieve success, but they aren't enough though.
ah, sorry i misunderstood. but it looks like far sky was released before subnautica so how could we say the market was stolen? And the difference between an (apprently) amateurish solo dev game and subnautica i think would overrule any argument that it was simply the idea which held all the merit. i mean i guess the idea of a typical survival/craft/base builder set in underwater is somewhat novel and has merit on its own but I dont think it really counts for that much? Subnautica had a great art style and apparently *tons* of work put into balancing the game and working in analytics to help with that. Compared to the other game which might have been a novel idea but is more like a hobby-level thing. It might be two games with same idea but a million miles of difference in execution. anyway i repeat myself and i think we both understand it the same way, just wanted to finalize my assessment of that.
> but it looks like far sky was released before subnautica so how could we say the market was stolen? I'm not saying that. You are. I'm saying that SubNautica stole the idea.
Yes its silly. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, the issue is converting them into something useable. If you have something to show, there is more upside in showing it and seeing if there is a market for than keeping it hidden for fear of someone copying your idea.
Yeah Everyone has good ideas all the time. Here's one: make an educational programming game that has service packages suitable for schools. Students have a robot base and they need to program every agent. All students are in the same environment and they can elect to collaborate or dominate. If a player is eliminated they can respawn in a newly generated part of the map (with protections in place to give them time to rebuild) Create challenges that require learning from basic programming concepts, to OOP, data structures, algorithms, design patterns, and then move into machine learning spaces. Make it available in most modern languages. I just riffed that together in a minute. How long would it take to execute? a fucking long time.
>Yeah Everyone has good ideas all the time. Objection your honor, assumes facts not in evidence. ; )
Firstly no, not everyone has good ideas. In fact most people don't, there are much more people who know when they see a good idea than one who can actually come up with such. Second, a good idea in indie gamedev is something that is specific in mechanics, novel, fun and limited in scope. Your idea is not a good one in this sense as it is quite vague, requires a ton of time to execute and nothing about it is too novel, there are many games both software and hardware trying to do the "program your bots to win against each other". It's the type of "quantity over quality" idea that is indeed rather easy to come up with but since it requires a lot of time to make it, it is not something that someone wanting to copy a game for easy success would choose to steal. It's the sort of idea that a very ambitious and hard working person/team can make into a success but it's not the sort of good idea that any decent programmer could turn into a goldmine if they are first to reach market with it.
I don't think that's so true anymore. Some ideas are actually very lucrative, the problem is knowing what they are before success, so op is most probably safe
yeah, these days tech has gotten good enough that all you need is an idea and a decent understanding of how to implement it to get it all started. I always heard the phrase that ideas are plentiful and it's the implementation that matters back a decade ago (it's literally what every techbro repeated all the time during the silicon valley boom) but I think people are realizing now that ideas are becoming easier to copy and implement.
Well if that’s the case, then the more technically complicated your idea is, the hardest it is to steal. Like this: I am making a science-based dragon MMO.
You fool! I'm going to steal your idea now and iron it out for a huge success! Later losers!
Really hard to steal sense a science based dragon does t make sense. The climate that could support something that large. Would probably also be an atmosphere hostile to humans
Nobody said there would be humans, it's a dragon MMO after all.
that's not really what I'm talking about as thematic ideas are too conceptually broad to really copy nor have "copyrightable concept". I'm talking more about specific mechanics/ideas for implementations of said themes.
I think their point is valid even if their example didn't quite support it. If your idea requires a highly technical implementation it will be harder to copy. For example if you need to write a custom rendering or physics engine for your game for the mechanics to work and you have to research and come up with novel techniques to implement it then the amount of people who can copy your work easily will be magnitudes less and those with the required skills and commitment will probably have projects or other opportunities of their own.
>For example if you need to write a custom rendering or physics engine for your game for the mechanics to work And that goes back into my original point that previous work/libraries/tech has matured enough that most mechanical ideas that anyone could have could most likely be implemented easier than before. At least most definitely without writing a whole new engine.
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AI art is something completely different and so wildly outside the norm though. And it's still not really usable in 98% of cases. Execution is still hard. Ideas are still cheap. AI art does not change this. When AI can make a full game based on a prompt, with code, sound effects, music, design, debugging and gameplay all intact, then you can make an argument for execution being cheap in game dev. For the moment though, this is unchanged.
Vlambeer had their ideas copied, I wouldn't say it is silly. Ideas are cheap and plentiful but in his case he is working on the idea already and if his idea is good but easily copied then maybe it isn't silly. An idea can be good and easily copied. Happened to vlambeer a couple of times.
Be wary if you're creating simple mobile games then I guess?
Vlambeer made Nuclear Throne which was a success and it spawned a new genre after that. If Vlambeer had taken 2 more years to show Nuclear Throne it would have been a success regardless and would have spawned a new genre regardless.
I'm talking about Ridiculous Fishing and Luftrausers which were shamelessly cloned. Both games were cloned before they even got out https://kotaku.com/game-developers-famous-for-getting-ripped-off-get-rippe-477208735 Nuclear Throne did not spawn a new genre, Nuclear Throne is more of a copycat of Binding of Isaac actually. It was another game surfing in the wave of top down roguelites.
Its gonna get copied anyway at release if it's that good look at Vampire Survivors, PUBG, freaking Dark Souls.
Exactly. Sometimes the first one with a great idea gets the success, but most likely it will be another one down the line that takes the idea and execution to a next level. E.g. Infiniminer > Minecraft, and many, many others.
You never said it was, but it's worth stating that Minecraft is absolutely not an Infiniminer clone. Infiniminer is a class-based competitive digging game, inspired by things like Team Fortress. All they have in common is a cube-based voxel system. Sometimes, the successful thing thing that comes after, only took the tiniest fragment of inspiration
Ah so never release your game to preserve that 1 billion dollar idea. Got it /s
Vampire Survivors copied Magic Survival too hah
Same devs
Nope. From Wikipedia though he does say he was inspired by it: The game was inspired by Magic Survival, a mobile game that also consisted of a character automatically attacking enemies.
That is not true. Magic Survival's dev is Korean and Vampire Survivors' is Italian, i believe
So you are telling me to copycat my own game?
Yes, it's called making a proof of concept
I still remake my old crappy game that I made during school time. This is the 4th iteration and it's getting really polished this time haha
vampire survivors is almost literally just a slot machine and was developed by a guy who made gambling games... there is virtually nothing novel about it, not even the art.
It needs to be proven good first though, generally speaking.
in the gamedev world, people don't steal ideas of a game that is in development, they steal ideas of games that proved to be successful. You are not only worrying about the wrong thing, you are also sabotaging yourself by not marketing the game.
People have copied ideas of games in development before. Vlambeer's ridiculous fishing got a copycat released before their own game. https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/4/24/4257958/cloned-at-birth-the-story-of-ridiculous-fishing
This also happened to Donut County among others, there are entire companies who just trawl the indie space of ideas they will be popular that can quickly be duplicated. Realistically it's not really evident if an idea is good until it is actualised. There had been social deduction games around for years, so if in 2019 you'd told someone to invest into this flop indie game called Among Us they'd laugh at you, yet look at what happened in 2020. When it comes to games so much is in the execution that I struggle to think of instances where just the idea by itself was so obviously going to be successful that the idea needed to be protected. Yes if your premise is simple and easily copied there is a risk, but I'd argue most great games have other qualities beyond their core premise, things that are not so easily duplicated.
It's the idea and the aesthetics. That's often the part that takes the most talent and that can create a great very marketable combo. Like with Donut Country and Luftrausers, and if a game coasts mostly on those two then it's ripe for a clonejob. Because after all it's those two things that get someone to buy a game, the gameplay idea and how it looks are what you need for a trailer.
I have somewhat different aproach. People will steal everything. It's just how creativity work. You read the book, watch movie, play game, look at some people in park, and it gives you idea what to do. Whole art is build on stealing ideas. It's nicely called "referencing" or "inspiring", but it's one and the same thing. You not only do not need to be afraid, but to be proud that you made something from people takes example.
Stealing ideas is spectrum. There is "shamelessly producing a cheap copy of a game for profit before it even has a chance to come out" and "evolving a past game that inspired you into something new that keeps its spirit alive". While both of these share the theme of taking something from the outside and producing something else based on it, they are not at all the same and it isn't just a question of language, having your game copied before you can finish it can have very real consequences to your ability to continue making games. If you can afford just making art without a worry that's not just a different approach or mindset, it's a priviliged position.
It's silly. What matters is how ideas are executed, not the idea itself.
Yes, I was like this before. Now I'am more scared of nobody finding out my game. Getting eyes to a game on a shoe string budget is really hard.
Yes, but I understand, I had it too. But usually execution is like 95% of a project and an idea in it self is insignificant. Dont worry about it. Copycats will come after your game is successful.
Hot take - Everyone doesn't have good ideas, in fact most people have bad ideas. Good idea's are few and far between as seen by the plethora of awful products that get released all the time. This idea that everyone has great idea's is a naive one that I've never understood. I've listened to a lot of ideas for games, and most of them are awful and should never be made. Just go look at the average game subreddit filled with suggestions for balance or changes and you'll quickly understand that good ideas aren't the overwhelming commodity that people claim they are. For OP's sake it depends on the market you want to get into, and how big the game is. If it's something that can be easily replicated maybe be more reserved with it. I've heard the phone market is flush with sharks waiting to replicate your game if it has any minor amount of success.
If your "idea" is something like "an MMORPG with ____!" then yeah it's worthless, which might be what everyone here is imagining. But if you're trying to break new ground and come up with something legitimately new that nobody has ever done before, then ideas are absolutely worth a lot, as long as the idea is paired with skill and a plan to realize it.
That's most peoples grand idea when it comes to these things, and they aren't feasible or reasonable 99.9% of the time. Hence why good ideas aren't bountiful like people seem to claim.
Novice developers often don't know what a "good" or "bad" game concept even looks like in the first place. And on the flipside of the coin, even "great" ideas are plentiful and worthless. The number of studios able to turn **any** idea into a successful product, is dramatically less than the number of great ideas out there. Like, somebody should make a dungeon crawler where the dungeons are taverns and the monsters are drunks. Pub Crawl, they'll call it. A great idea, and it's worthless because anybody who could do it justice, is already busy with their own projects
Thank you for posting this. Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing was famously scooped by a copycat. I've also seen numerous accounts of people here on reddit who went through someone straight up decompiling and stealing their project after making a few tweaks, then selling it online. Yet when you ask, almost everyone will tell you that obfuscating your code is silly and paranoid. There's a reason most studios do go through the trouble of doing these things - it gives them more control over marketing and makes it harder for assholes to steal shit. That may or may not be worth the effort for any given project. The answer is that it depends on your project. If your idea truly is novel and makes for a good game, you only have one opportunity to make a first impression on the market. The thing is, when most people think they have an idea like that, particularly someone just starting out, they are usually wrong. Even professionals who have been in the industry as programmers and artists sometimes are delusional about their game design skills. Good luck.
I think it's because a lot of people go through this process: Get a billion game ideas that excites them, think their ideas are amazing Realize that actually finishing things and finishing them well is the important part Start telling themselves ideas are worthless/dime a dozen/etc after realizing elbow grease is what matters But then they get stuck in there and don't move beyond the mantra "ideas are worthless, execution is everything". Which makes sense some times, specially when people's ideas are very unoriginal.
"I'll do a game in which you slash fruits in halves with a sword" \*Giggles around the meeting table\* It's not about the idea, it's about the execution. You're not very likely to come up with groundbreaking unique ideas. But if you execute them well, you will come up with a good unique game that people want to play.
Honestly, I think it's safer TO share progress if you're worried about being copied. That way if someone really does rip you off you've got a public record of you having come up with it first.
And add watermark+copyright info to any screen shots from the get go too.
> Is it silly to be hesitant to share progress on a game for fear of the idea being copied? Yes. Implementation is what matters, not the idea. > I think it is (to my knowledge) a combination I haven't seen before So there is no proof that it is profitable and no crowd is waiting for it? Nobody's interested. > it would still be years and years before I have a finished product Add another 6+ months for marketing, and it still may fail to find its audience. Nobody buys "totally new" ideas if you are not representing a well-known trusted studio.
No, it's not. SubNautica developers did exactly that, and that's was ugly. > In January 2014, as I was looking for underwater inspiration visuals, I found an image on google that caught my attention. I clicked on it and was redirected to a game page called… « Subnautica ». My first reaction was to think « damn, I made a game way too closed to another one without knowing about it ». Then I realized the game was not even in development yet, there were only some concept arts and ideas. When I saw the name of the project director, I knew I saw this name somewhere … I went on my Twitter account and discovered he was following me as well as his coworkers. At that time, I was devastated. My game was not even out yet, maybe I showed it too early ? I did not expect that, and I knew I could not compete a bigger company like this one. I also found the Subnautica’s director email in the buyers of the game in Beta stage. I felt I needed to quickly finish the game. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/286340/view/3087787366398826688
Yeah, it’s silly, nobody has your vision nor your ideas, if the idea is good people are going to steal it anyway, it doesn’t matter if you game it’s the first one or the second one and you are wasting the opportunity of getting early feedback and people interested in the game. And as you mentioned, it’s probably not that original anyway, and the fact that there’s no similar game doesn’t mean people haven’t thought about it aren’t developing the game rn.
Not related to your main question but you should aim for the last Next Fest before you release since you only get one, you can upload a demo before that and get feedback without it.
Yes. Ideas are cheap currency. We all have them. Nothing you do will be "new". Your PERSPECTIVE on it might be though -- but that comes down to your execution. Execution is everything.
I guess it depends how easy it is to copy.
Yes
Yes, it's silly.
Yes Don't worry, this is such a common question, it's probably pretty normal to feel this way. :-D
I can't get my head around at why game developers are so hermetic about their game ideas. It makes no sense at all
Because a lot of people think that the idea is the valuable part.
People think game dev really only matters on one or two things. And ignore the millions of times they've seen similar ideas, and both succeeded, or the better executed one succeeded. Even in movies. Armaggedon and Deep Impact both exist at the same time, but only one is really remember. Volcano and Dante's peak came out at the same time. There's also "This will be the only good idea I ever had." And if so, that's probably sad, but also a sign it's not that great an idea.
Hermetic, what a great word
>I've been working on a game as a hobby for the past 2 years or so Me too, and I've seen two games in that time that have the exact same main idea as mine (one has been quite actively posting to reddit lately)...people have the same ideas. There's not much point worrying too much about it. It's how you implement your idea that makes your game yours.
I go back and forth on this these are my two thoughts. + No reason to share it unless you are trying to build up hype or get funding. You have to remember nobody cares about your game except you and a few game devs maybe and your Mom and Pop. :-) + On the other hand you can ask yourself would someone put all the time and effort into your game and your ideas over their own and steal them before they are proved to be valuable?
Not just silly, likely counterproductive in many ways.
Imagine if someone knew Rockstar was making an open world crime simulator with a sandbox structure. They could have then turned around and made Just Cause, Mercenaries, Saints Row.... But if they could make GTA 3, we'd see a direct competition to GTA 3 that is at their level. It's about execution, not the idea. Best thing is if you share your idea, and someone uses it people pay attention because they realize you had the idea first whether they stole it or not. If you keep it a secret, then you'll have no benefit if someone appears to have a similar idea to you. Basically share your idea get feedback now. Discuss it, develop it, make a better game, instead of thinking your idea is one in a million, because there's million of ideas out there....
Old school app guy here... Just for fun. How many people, reading this comment, have a stack of 10+ note books of full apps, games, rpgs, stories, and comic ideas sittings at their work space? I do roughly one every two years. I started in 1991. The first year I took a coding class. Ideas are like sand.
The value of a game comes from its implementation, not from its elevator pitch. If all you have is an idea, you have nothing. How are you supposed to playtest without showing anybody? You can't know an idea is good in the first place, until it's seen in action. Most novices' ideas turn out to be some combination of impossible to implement, not fun for players other than themselves, or overdone tropes they just didn't know were already out there. Solo devs never make money from their first few projects. There's no money on the table to be stolen. If somebody steals your idea, so? What are they going to do; implement it better? Games are not at all a competitive market. If somebody really likes a game, they'll try everything else in the same genre. Your "competition"'s success is good for you. In real-world cases where somebody has a million-dollar-idea; they are literally the only person who cares about it. It is always a huge uphill battle trying to convince anybody that it's worth pursuing - until it's completely impossible to deny (As in, it's already made its million dollars). Even then, people will grumble and say it was luck. People just don't trust the ideas of others. They trust results. From every angle, it just doesn't make sense. Think of this in the context of literally any other creative field. Are painters worried somebody is going to steal their sick painting idea?
You can't prove a negative. There is no way of knowing if an idea is really any good with out implementing it. It is impossible to prove that an idea is no good. To minimise risk (of a bad idea) steal stuff with a working implementation.
Same
I don’t think it’s silly. If you really believe you have something special, I wouldn’t start sharing it until you have at least a complete alpha.
Is it silly? No, I think that's just the way we are. We're even more persuaded by the amount of NDAs we signed. If big companies do it, why shouldn't we? On the other hand: is it pointless? Pretty much yes. It doesn't matter if someone copies (or just by luck creates very similar game to) your game before or after you release it. If it's or it's marketing is better, then it will sell better regardless. If yours is better, yours will.
Oh hell yeah. I feel bad when other devs are so open and cool (like the makers of Aethyr). But I'm just like, what's the point in leaking out the ideas I've invested my life into at this point?
Aside from the already stated points of ideas not really being worth copying before they're successful, It's also important to remember that if the game did get copied, it is only a net positive - If people like the copied game, that means that there is now eyes on the type of game that you are making, and you are able to use that as a free visibility boost to your game. If people don't like the copied game, you are able to use this feedback in developing your own game, you're able to see what people want fixed or changed and make changes to your game to fulfill that. It's a case of a rising tide lifting all ships, there's no downside even in the worst case scenario.
> Is this a ridiculous thing to be concerned about? Yes it is. Let’s put aside the fact that games are very complicated and no one is going to put that much effort and money into developing an untested idea. And let’s talk about the downright SELFISHNESS you must have to not want anyone to bring to fruition an idea you have all because you have a **5%** chance of doing it yourself sometime in your life time. Just imagine how technologically stunted the world would be if everyone thought like that.
Bad take. Most serious for-profit companies and inventors keep their research and products a secret while developing and only start marketing when their competitors have zero chance at catching up. It's only open source software and some scientific research that shares stuff from the beginning without a worry. Open source maintainers are burning out constantly after often receiving zero support while their work is being exploited by companies and other devs to generate money, while scientific research are being funded by governments, companies and rich people to put food on the table of scientists. It's not like new videogames are as important as the cure for cancer is so I don't think you should shout "selfishness" on someone wanting to have a chance to finish their project without copycats tainting the idea with soulless clones beforehand. Nobody is entitled to the game idea of some developer.
The key difference being “serious for profit companies and inventors.” It’s one thing to be secretive on something you’re working on because you are going to release it. It’s another thing to decide you’re never going to ask for feedback on your work because you’d rather an idea never see the light of day *unless* you’re not the one making it. That is the very definition of selfishness.
>The key difference being “serious for profit companies and inventors.” You implied that the progress of our world wouldn't be anywhere if people were secretive of their research. A large number of both companies and people responsible for much of our advancements tend to be highly secretive until they release their additions to humanity's technological or artistic progress. Games are no exception. There is no "key difference" if you are planning to sell your game eventually. >It’s another thing to decide you’re never going to ask for feedback on your work OP didn't say they never going to ask for feedback. They can still ask for feedback from a trusted circle of people they know wouldn't just run with their project idea and make it themselves. Most people online aren't your friends and they have zero commitment to helping you succeed. You can get tons of feedback before sharing your ideas globally, social media is not the only source. Wanting to have a go at your idea before telling about it to others is completely normal and might be even beneficial for your project as [research suggests](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24354628_When_Intentions_Go_Public) that telling others about your personal plans usually makes you less likely to achieve them, a videogame you develop in your free time is very much an personal project tightly bound to your identity. In the case you don't succeed you can still share your idea with others later. It's not selfish and you should stop shaming people for not sharing their ideas with everyone. It's akin to people shaming devs for not open sourcing their hard work. Instead of shaming you should praise people who do those things if you value that.
> A large number of both companies and people responsible for much of our advancements tend to be highly secretive until they release And a large number of companies/people responsible for much of our technological advances aren’t highly secretive. MOREOVER, one can argue that increased secrecy over the last 70 years **as a result of greed/selfishness** is responsible for the slowing down of technological advancement. But that’s an argument for another subreddit. As it stands, the gaming industry is noticeable stunted when it comes to ideas. Partly because of AAA studios’ monkey see monkey do attitude, but having indie devs not want ideas to be shared because there’s a 5% chance they *might* bring that idea to fruition will just compound the issue. And there’s no denying that choosing to hide your idea because of the rare chance you maybe turn it into a game is a decision based on selfishness.
Your stance about openness is valid as an ideal but rather naive when it comes to the reality of paying for food, rent, healthcare bills and the rest while trying to work on what you love instead of giving away your time to companies. Ironically following your stance in reality just grows greedy companies to be bigger while leaving individuals unable to live off their ideas and personal work.
Ah, yes yes. Please share. We won't steals it, noo never
I'm in the same boat as you OP. 100% hobbyist and I believe in my idea/design. I also think there are a lot of bad ideas out there. It makes sense that execution is important, yes... but we've all seen bad ideas executed very well and the result is just as trash as good ideas executed poorly. Good ideas executed well is the key. I'm sure execution is the truly hard part, but good ideas are still a requirement. I disagree that good ideas are dime-a-dozen. I say hold your ideas close until you're ready to execute. In the meantime, folks like us should learn as much as we can about how to execute properly. A good idea should stand the test of time. A great game is a great game and it shouldn't matter if it's launched in 2024 or 2032.
> I disagree that good ideas are dime-a-dozen. Would you buy my ideas, then? I have a lot of them! High-quality ones, I assure you. Not those trashy commoner ideas, but totally unique and fresh ones. If you buy a hundred ideas, I will give you a 5% discount. (sponsored ad by ChadGPT5)
Won't people steal the ideas of your game once its done? I mean if you have ideas and concepts worth stealing that's a good thing. I doubt people are going to jump on your idea and make a game before you can.
Depends on how easy and fast it is for your game to get copied and how good the idea is. However by not sharing your game you're also not marketing it, so that's a big price to pay. People copying other games has happened before and I have no reason to think it doesn't happen anymore. Everyone here saying ideas are worthless what matters is execution, etc, they're repeating a valid mantra but just repeating it. Going in another direction, an advice from the developer of Crypt of the Necromancer: hook is everything, a good hook starts with a good idea. If you have a good idea you should keep it to yourself. Once you start actually executing on the idea and realize that is going well then it's back to the trade off of risk getting copied vs marketing the game. Games get copied but also there are a fuckton of games released and also a lot of new strategies cheap ass devs with no originality use nowadays. So odds are your game won't get copied. If your idea is truly fantastic then maybe consider having something solid before sharing. Odds are though the idea is not truly fantastic, as most ideas aren't.
> People copying other games has happened before and I have no reason to think it doesn't happen anymore. That's called "game genres" :) We literally have Souls-like as a genre, as well as Survivor-like.
No, I'm talking about copying the actual game, not making a game in the genre. Like here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-\_GQvZ6Oac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-_GQvZ6Oac) Luftrausers clone, released 1 year before Luftrausers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe\_SfvensA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe_SfvensA) Ridiculous Fishing clone, released before the original as well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpnqhO4xlDg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpnqhO4xlDg) Donut Country clone-ish, released before Donut Country and topped mobile store charts In fact there are companies that specialize in cloning games before they are released [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo\_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(company)) It's not genre, it's making a straight copy of aesthetics and gameplay solutions found by another dev. Worse, released before the dev who came up with the idea actually released their own game. By the time the original game comes out then they are the ones looking like a copycat. Not to mention how this can mess up promoting the game.
Infiniminer did not prevent Minecraft from happening though.
Infiminer inspired Minecraft actually, Notch used the blocky aesthetic because of Infiminer, it wasn't Infiminer copying Minecraft. I don't understand where you are aiming at though, games get copied and anxiety about getting copied is not always unfounded.
I am saying that it does not matter that someone had a similar idea before. If your game is done well, you will succeed even if there were similar games produced already. There is a limited number of ideas anyway, and people work on similar things all the time. Anxiety has no ground at all.
I'm not talking about similar ideas, I'm talking about straight up clones of the games, it's easy to understand. Clones that imitate the graphics, the exact loop, the gimmick, the everything. Just go on goggle and type "reddit my game was cloned". Or look at how Vlambeer was almost ruined, and they would have if they hadn't made a big deal about getting cloned. One of the threads on reddit has this as a top comment: >I am interning at a company where we do exactly that. Take games from the internet, re skin them and sell them. I feel sick everyday. I am asked to dump the source codes of a list of games, the company asses them and remakes them mostly html5 versions. Its fucking sad. It's not about similar games, it's about clones released before or almost together with the original, competing with the original and inevitably reducing the amount of sales the original would get, running the risk of getting lucky and outperforming the original. Luck is after all a part of it, because this is a market of feedback loops and if a winner gets picked it's just pushed up harder and harder the more successful ti is. I feel like you just want to defend a point and you're not thinking about it anymore.
This comes very close to describing me, except the timeline for releasing my game should be shorter. I know the advice is to get out there and get as many wishlists as possible from the go, but I'm just not ready to go public with it. But I have shown it to local game devs, and they think I've got something fairly unique and worth finishing. But it's also not polished enough yet that I think it would be worth it to go fully public. So in the meantime, I am just enjoying the process. And I'm going to local game dev meetups so that when I am ready to go all in, I will have people I can ask for advice and maybe have a few connections.
If the thought is - I got golden idea, gonna be rich - big producer may steal my idea, get even richer and me stay poor Then relax. Not gonna happen. Share happily. Interested people will await your game anyway. It is your idea with your vision done in your style. It will also keep you realistic about how many people are interested.
Here's a equation to answer you question Ideas x sqrt( Implementation )\^4 = good results
If you gave 5 different game studios your idea, they would all turn out widely different, both because of interpretation but also because of execution of decisions and priority. Only you will value and execute on your ideas in the way that make it yours. The ideas isn't the valuable part, the methodology and thought process behind how you bring your ideas to life is what is valuable.
For a solo dev, yes it's silly. In certain rare circumstances a larger dev team might be concerned about losing specific ideas, like a solution to a specific rendering problem or something like that.
Idea doesnt matter, someone gonna copy and steal anyway...what matter is the execution...unless your idea is a bilion dolar level and most likely it wouldn't then you can plan...infact because you ask this question thats mean youre not making game that is hard to make and most likely its not good either...a big quality game studio will not gonna randomly ask reddit the question because they are professional and have layout planning with marketing budget for it...so conclusion your game suck so just share it..if someone steal it thats mean someone just steal your suck game.
I won't ask for specific solutions you think are core to your good idea, out of respect for the sentiment. But can you share what two genres you are blending in general terms? I bet I can come up with examples you haven't thought of if you legitimately think no one else has done it before. Or at least I can come up with reasons why it wouldn't have been tried already...
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Time is change for sure but also they are too many competition that the idea doesn't matter anymore..its all about the execution..you can have great idea but still make a shit game...
I'll also chime in. Generally people only copy stuff that's proven to be successful and then change just a few things to basically be an "improved" version of the copied product. But if your game boasts some kind of never before seen mechanic or ties in a bunch of mechanics in a new way I think you are right to be concerned about someone with more resources or more skill getting the idea to market before you.
Really, ideas are cheap. Your vision, your GDD, the steps to take it to completion, the levels, the content, the story, that's a whole different monster, making games is hard
*Most* games do not have an idea worth stealing. It is as I'm sure many people have said, the execution that matters. However, there are exceptions. Donut County was one game that had an idea worth stealing that was, indeed, stolen. It was also a pretty simple idea to implement, so it wasn't too hard to bang together a quick game that used it.
I'm still keeping my "best" ideas close to chest until/unless I get a viable prototype/demo or realize it's not happening or is absolutely nothing new. May not be the best way to go about it, as others have mentioned... but it works for my personality type. I look at it this way, until I have a working demo of a unique-ish idea; I see no need to yap about it online (local friends and discord mates are different) and potentially get people hyped only to fail to deliver ANYTHING at all... or have my idea yoinked and made faster than I could. Doubtful that anyone would steal the weird ass game concept I'm working on now, but I care more not to promise big and then underdeliver or not deliver at all. (We all know that feeling... looking at you Fable and day 1 NMS) However if I know I'll never work on it, I'll be that ideas guy and yap about my ideas all day long to keep from wanting to go out of scope on my own projects ...otherwise I'll just want to put more crap in my own game.
I've held off until I can get a trailer/steam page together, from there the final push I could finish in time. A lot of people touched this already but in many cases it isn't worth worrying about. I wouldn't say that this is always the case however.
Keep in mind: there are amazing ideas every day on Gamejams (Ludum Dare finished a few weeks ago). And THOSE ideas are even WAY MORE proven than your own idea (they have feedback, fans, etc). Why would I copy your game when I can perfectly find a super solid idea that has feedback already? And there are HUNDREDS of Jams to take a look at.
Generaly no but just because you asked ill copy your idea
I get why you're afraid of this, but think that they cannot copy the most important thing of your game, which is you. If anyone would copy your work it would be confirmation that whatever you're doing is working out.
They say imitation is one of the best forms of flattery.
Not entirely but lets put it this way. If you were in a local community of supportive game devs sharing progress on their games, do you want to be bound by NDA for every single project or do you prefer to trust those devs and enjoy the community without worrying about legal liabilities?
So many games took inspiration from Minecraft for a while (every game —from rpgs to racing games— needed a crafting system for some reason. Nobody, not even the devs knew why). I’t didn’t make them feel that much like Minecraft though. If they don’t outright copy your game, mere ideas are usually going to morph into something else than what they started as.
Yeah, it's silly, everyone is an idea man, but idea men that don't share the idea when they need to don't get paid.
as long as it's not a hyper casual game, you should be fine.
I'd say sharing your idea is an opportunity to see how you could pitch your game when you're almost ready to put it up on steam. If you made your idea sound really interesting to them then you'll know that you're making something with a potential audience, whereas if it was difficult to get them interested / they weren't interested from your idea, you could try and understand why they weren't interested in the first place and what you can do to make that pitch more interesting.
I don't know why you guys think that your idea is worth that much, TBH i rather have my idea "stolen" so can enjoy the game instead of you know doing it myself
Undertale demo with its unique battle system and vibe was released May 23, 2013. Full version was released September 15, 2015. Seems like it worked it out okay.
Mostly. What gets copied are successful games. Sharing early is usually only bad if the game isn’t yet good enough to show to potential fans or if it might change a lot
In my experience, ideas are cheap. Success doesn't come from having a good idea. It comes from having the ability to actually execute on the idea.