A Steam party game that hasn’t even launched yet has already been cloned more than a dozen times on Google Play.
Emrah İşlek, co-founder and CEO of developer GamesMrkt, shared a grid of 15 lookalike listings for Fart Together on LinkedIn, as spotted by GameDiscoverCo. Most use the game’s name, and one, from a developer called Advanced Finance Consulting, is even titled “Fart Together: Official”.
“I think we may have broken a record for the most clones in the shortest time – for a game that hasn’t even launched yet,” İşlek wrote.
Fart Together is a physics-based co-op obstacle course for up to four players, who steer a shared raft using well-timed farts. Its Steam demo launched on October 8 and was one of the 20 most-played demos at October’s Steam Next Fest, according to PC Games Hardware, peaking at just under 4,000 concurrent players. It has a Very Positive rating from more than 1,200 reviews. The full game is only listed for PC.
İşlek questioned how the copies made it through Google’s review process. “Whenever we publish a game on Android or iOS, we go through multiple rounds of revisions,” he wrote. “How do these clones get approved so easily? Even before manual review, shouldn’t copies this obvious be flagged by AI-powered checks? At this point, I suspect we’ll face more revisions publishing the original than they did publishing the copies!”
It’s not the first time a Steam hit has been copied on mobile before its developer could get there. In 2024, Lethal Company clones appeared on both Apple and Google’s app stores, some with more than 100,000 downloads.
AI tools are making it easy to copy existing games. Claude developer Anthropic recently added a rule to Claude Code against recreating existing games, although it has since relaxed it so that Claude offers to build an original game in the same genre instead. Earlier this year, the UK’s number one iOS game, 38-0-0, was built overnight by a solo creator using Claude Code.
Cloning disputes are reaching the courts, too – Vita Mahjong and Meowdoku maker Oakever Games lost a copyright case to Block Blast maker Hungry Studio, and is fighting a second from Avia Games.
Last month, multiple small and mid-sized game developers told us they are seeing a serious slowdown in app review times, stretching approvals from the expected 24-48 hours to several weeks in some cases.
Back in April, The Information reported that AI-made apps and games had caused an 84% year-on-year jump in submissions to Apple’s App Store. Apple’s developer forums are also awash with complaints about app review timings, and sources like Runway’s app review times tracker note a recent rise in average review times.
