Endless pile of Needle In Haystack games begins to emerge, as viral hit imitator’s devs claim their code was nicked by a genAI-using clone

NoGlyph’s developers say another studio copied code from their game, as several needle-in-a-haystack games appear on Steam following a viral post about the concept. The allegation matters because it concerns specific code, rather than simply similar gameplay, amid growing developer concerns that AI tools can help imitate games.

NoGlyph says the later game, A Game About Needle In A Haystack, contains 13 classes with matching names and more than half of the functions in the hay-digging code matching its own. The studio says some error messages also match and that it has filed a copyright notice with Valve. The accused game discloses using generative AI for its logo; there is no confirmation that AI was used to copy code.