It doesn't need to recreate your game. It can still muddy your marketing and redden the ocean. Especially if someone is in the business of trying to front run an indie game, they don't need to be any where close to a full or good game to attempt to steal any mindshare your project had.
Is this happening at any significant rate?
AFAICT this is a fear that some game developers have, that someone will steal their game and run with it, and the stories told are more repeated based on this shared fear than based on realistic scenarios. People repeat it because it’s a good story.
And yes, I’m aware of some situations like 0x10c and the like.
I don't think it has to be about stealing their game with any level of skill or fidelity. It's enough to just spam 10 garbage clones with vaguely similar banner images and descriptions so that nobody will find theirs.
The appstores are full of knockoffs and even resubmitted decompiles. I certainly wouldn't put it past the scammers.
More specifically to AI... A blog on a nice website is no longer a signal for quality so there's just no point in devs investing in that.
I frequent a couple of game development communities, and it's kind of hilarious that some people won't even talk about their general game concept for fear that others will steal their idea. Like wow, you're making another rogue deck-builder, I have to steal that!
The idea is not valuable, ideas are a dime a dozen. The actual value is in your implementation.
Is that true anymore, LLM will implement everything for you, idea actually matters more now
If you point an LLM at an idea, you'll get a "lossy JPEG" version of that idea.
It requires discernment, taste, on the part of the user to be able to point the LLM at the weird parts that look wrong.
Even with that, the LLM can only fix most of, not all of, those rough edges.
LLMs will generate. Taste continues to dictate what to keep/discard. (Note that taste can get you to good, but good won’t get you to money on its own)
It's still true for now. AI can't yet make a game with complex mechanics feel good to a human, although it can speed up a lot of the implementation.
This is fantasy and if it was true the idea would be public when the product was released.
There's no moat in an idea either so I guess it's down to marketing budget.