THE FUSE

Earlier this year, an indie developer posted a 50-second clip of a cool game idea they had been thinking about for a long time. What if Tetris, but the board rotated as you added blocks? It was a neat idea that went viral on social media. But within a few days of posting the video, Freya Holmér discovered someone had created a clone of her idea using AI-coding tools. And then another vibe-coded clone appeared in app stores. And then more. This is the new reality for indie devs, one which might cost them a lot of money and could lead to people being less open with their ideas.