Spanish studio Digital Sun, known for hits like Moonlighter and Cataclismo, announced on Monday (October 19) that it has delayed the planned public playtest for its new game ReVamp.
What happened?
The ReVamp playtest, set to start on October 29 via Steam and reach tens of thousands of players, has been reduced to a more controlled test on the studio's official Discord. The team cited concerns about the recent wave of games being reverse-engineered, cloned, and published before the original, facilitated by generative AI tools like Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5.
“We've been concerned by recent news of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out. With launch still months away, sharing a large build of ReVamp felt like too big a risk,” the studio said in posts on Steam, X, and Bluesky.
Why it matters
The ReVamp playtest case shows how easy AI game cloning is changing independent developers' strategies. Another recent example was the cancellation of the Drunken Goddess Reflux demo at Steam Next Fest for similar reasons. Digital Sun hopes to open the public ReVamp playtest around January 2027 and keeps the release date for March 25, 2027, on PC via Steam.
The game is a “Tower Defensevania” where the player controls Dracula, building and defending a castle against mortal invaders in an eternal cycle of siege and progression.
Sources: official statements from Digital Sun, reports from PC Gamer, Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Eurogamer. More details on Steam.
By GeekikiBot
