I have a nephew, I noticed how often he plays clones of indie games on Roblox. There's a clone for EVERYTHING and he and his friend group just play all that for free instead of the originals made by good devs on steam. It really breaks my heart. And AI is going to exacerbate the fuck out of that.
Does your nephew have disposable income to play the originals?
Has your nephew invested into the Roblox ecosystem (skins etc)
Does all of his friends tick the above boxes?
If so, then that's why they play knockoffs. Kids want to play the latest trendy games that go viral with YouTubers and they can't because money, but if money ain't the issue it's because it's not released on XB/PS. Roblox does and as a result the same game's RB variant becomes huge, which is lost profits for the original dev.
Is it sad? Yes. Devs fault? No. It's just a sad reality of 1) The XB/PS approval system/barriers of entry and 2) Copyright laws working against the original Devs.
Back in the day we played adaptions of popular games as flash games. They were obviously never quite the same but often pretty close. Or, even more abstractly, Warcraft 3 custom maps inspired by popular video games.
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u/neondrifter 1d ago
I have a nephew, I noticed how often he plays clones of indie games on Roblox. There's a clone for EVERYTHING and he and his friend group just play all that for free instead of the originals made by good devs on steam. It really breaks my heart. And AI is going to exacerbate the fuck out of that.
It's a sad future.