The last few days have been infested with all sorts of troubles regarding vibe-coded AI mods. First, it was SFO for Total War: Warhammer 3, which its original creator had to purposefully damage and modify to stop so-called “modders” from bastardizing it with AI-generated content.
And now, it’s vibe coders making full-on recreations of popular games and franchises, which seems to have prompted Bethesda and Activision to take legal action against them. As spotted by Kotaku, Fallout: New York, an AI-generated adaptation of Fallout built to work in a browser, was taken down by the author, who said the “suits” had come after his project and apparently ruined his fun of ripping off other people’s decades of work by putting in none himself.
Read what’s behind the latest news in gaming (with a bit of snark) by subscribing to the Destructoid Checkpoint newsletter!
Prior to the takedown, the creator described Fallout: New York like this: “Quests. Dialogue trees. V.A.T.S. A working Pip-Boy. Zero texture files. Zero sound files. Every building, weapon, face and sound is generated by code,” as if this sort of disclosure does anything to dignify his “work.”
On the other hand, one user on X was trying to get his hands on Modern Warfare 2‘s source code by siccing 17 AI bots on the thing and then bragging about it on social media. Suffice it to say that Activision didn’t like that one bit, moving in to strike down his footage of an apparent kill streak he had earned in the game. Sad.
AI vibe-coding has completely oversaturated every facet of programming and creative work imaginable. From video games to books to music to every single thing you could think of, vibe-coders and “prompt engineers” have ruined it. It’s becoming quite difficult to navigate through the sludge and get to the things people actually spent half a brain cell trying to make, and things are only going to get worse from here.
