My game was cloned with AI... what do I do?

Summary

Mark Brown discusses an email from two hobby developers, “Woof” and “Baby,” who used Claude Code to create Words Upon Words, a game closely based on his spelling roguelike, Word Play. They said they love Word Play and had added features of their own, but asked Mark whether they should release the game. He asked them to hold off while he considered the situation.

What the clone includes

Words Upon Words shares Word Play’s core loop: making words from a tile grid, meeting score targets, and using modifiers. It also adds:

• A timed mode and daily challenge
• Multiplayer races and duels
• Meta-progression, perks, special tiles, and rounds
• Hungarian-language support
• Various UI and gameplay changes

Mark finds some of the additions appealing, though others make the game more complex than the breezy, accessible experience he intended for Word Play.

Mark’s conflicting concerns

• Potential lost income: Word Play still earns money after its 2025 launch, and a free or cheaper clone could draw away some players. Mark also thinks the original has stronger UI, sound design, and music.
• Inspiration versus copying: Games commonly build on ideas from earlier games, and Mark is pleased that Word Play inspired someone. But he feels Words Upon Words goes beyond general inspiration because it reproduces Word Play’s core so directly.
• Cloning is not new, but AI accelerates it: Mark points to a long history of game clones, including the relationship between Threes and 2048. What troubles him is that Claude’s logs show a playable core being built in about twelve minutes, compared with the seven months he spent making Word Play.
• The appeal and cost of AI: Mark objects to generative AI’s broader harms, including environmental impacts, misinformation, scams, worker displacement, and IP concerns. At the same time, he admits he is envious that the developers could add features so quickly—work that took him months to code.
• The clone may do some things better: Mark acknowledges that its extra modes and progression systems could be attractive. He reflects that he had wanted to add similar features, but development, debugging, technical debt, and burnout left him without the energy to do so.
• Should simple games be avoided? Mark considers advice that developers should avoid relying on easily copied mechanics, but argues that doing so would mean losing many elegant, simple games.
• Will AI restrictions help? Anthropic reportedly adjusted Claude Code to discourage recreating specific games. Mark welcomes the change but questions whether it can be bypassed or whether other AI tools will impose similar limits.

Mark ends without a decision. He says he is glad Word Play inspired a new development experience, but also has to protect his livelihood. He asks viewers for their opinions and says he will share the eventual outcome later.

People, games, and sources mentioned

• People: Mark Brown; “Woof” and “Baby,” the Words Upon Words developers; Lucas Pope; Zach, Word Play’s soundtrack composer; Asher Vollmer; Tom Giardino; an unnamed Anthropic spokesperson.
• Games and works: Word Play, Mind Over Magnet, Words Upon Words, Balatro, Luck Be a Landlord, Slay the Spire, Dominion, Bookworm Adventures, Scrabble, Vampire Survivors, The Sims, Space Invaders, Threes, 2048, Skyrim, Call of Duty, Elden Ring, Tetris, Canabalt, Fruit Ninja, Super Hexagon, and Wordle.
• Companies, tools, and other references: Claude Code, Anthropic, Gemini, Meta AI, Apple, Bethesda, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, and the Wii home-screen menus.