Indie Game Developer Accuses Studio of Using AI to Rip Off His Viral Potato Peeling Game

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Published September 21, 2026 · Category: Games

Overview

An indie game developer has accused a fellow dev of using AI to rip off his game, a first-person, physics-based title where players peel potatoes.

Independent game developer Rado Klasa is going viral after pointing out a glaring similarity between his game, called 1,000,000 Potatoes, and another title named Potato Please. Both have a similar premise; players peel potatoes using physics-based engines. Each game takes place in a Soviet-style military setting. They both seem horror-adjacent.

Klasa posted about his game back in July; on September 20, game consultant Indie Game Joe shared a trailer for Golden Horn Studios’ Potato Please. It didn’t take long for Klasa to come across the post, prompting him to speak out about what he is calling blatant intellectual theft.

Klasa believes that Golden Horn directly stole the idea for his game and accused them of using artificial intelligence to do so, describing the situation as “every indie dev’s worst nightmare.”

“I created this concept for the GMTK game jam,” he explained. “I held off on my Steam page to obsessively polish the mechanics... and it just got cloned and shipped. Probably mostly with a simple AI prompt.”

“I’ve spent time refining the game feel, controls, and details,” he added. “It hurts to see a rushed clone beat me to market, but I refuse to let a cheap copy win. The original version will always have the quality players actually deserve.”

Curators on Steam are already flagging Potato Please as an “AI imagery Rip off of 1,000,000 Potatoes,” and commenters on social media are offering their support and promising to wishlist Klasa’s game — but Golden Horn is maintaining their innocence.

“We need to address this directly. Calling our game a ‘clone’ and implying it was made with ‘a simple AI prompt’ are serious accusations,” the studio wrote in response to Klasa’s post on X/Twitter. “We had never seen your game before these posts. Potato Please originated independently from a potato meme and video popular in our community.

“Similar concepts are not evidence of copying. Real people have spent significant time designing, modelling, coding and developing this game, and we’re prepared to show our project files and development process if necessary. We’re happy to discuss genuine similarities, but publicly presenting speculation about our team and our work as fact is unfair.”

Players, however, aren’t convinced of Golden Horn’s story. “Its’ just really f**king weird that somehow you both got Soviet Russia potato peeling sim and your account didn't exist until after the game jam happened,” one user argued.

“This is literally 1:1 the SAME GAME lmao stop lying,” another wrote, while others couldn't seem to uncover the viral meme Golden Horn referenced in its reply.

Still, others have accused Golden Horn of using AI to write their response to Klasa’s post. Potato Please made their account just two months ago, and thus far, have shared no progress videos or screenshots showing them making the game, though this isn’t totally unusual in itself.

For other unique indie games that haven’t been hit with AI allegations, check out our coverage of Stray Dog: nobody cares and Ylem’s Cat, both games where you play as an animal or fight bad guys alongside an animal.

Source

Originally published at www.ign.com.

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